^ 


BT  160  .F68  1917 

Forsyth,  Peter  Taylor,  1848 

1921. 
The  justification  of  God 


THE   JUSTIFICATION   OF  GOD 


STUDIES  IN  THEOLOGY 

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A  Critical  Introduction  to  the  New  Testament 

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A  Critical  Introduction  to  the  Old  Testamp'^t 
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A  Handbook  of  Christian  Apologetici 

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Christianity  and  Sin 

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The  Holy  Spirit  in  Thought  and  Experience 

By  T.  Rees,  M.A. 

The  Doctrine  of  the  Atonement 

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History  of  the  Study  of  Theology.     2  VoH. 

By  Charles  Augustus  Briggs,  D.D.,  D.Litt. 


THE 

JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD 

Lectures  for  War-Time  on  a  Christian  Theodicy 


P.    T.    FORSYTH,    M.  A.,    D.  D. 

PRINCIPAL  OF   HACKNEY  COLLEGE,    HAMPSTEAD 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1917 


All  rights  reserved 


PEEFACE 

I  HAVE  been  warned  that  the  appearance  of  an  unfamiliar 
word  Uke  Theodicy  on  the  title-page  (even  in  the  sub-title) 
may  raise  a  certain  prejudice  in  some  minds  that  one  would 
rather  attract  than  repel.  But  it  is  hard  to  beheve  that 
the  word  can  be  so  strange  at  a  time  when  the  passion  for 
the  thing  has,  by  the  magnitude  of  our  present  calamity, 
become  for  multitudes  the  keynote  of  their  reUgion.  We 
are  all  famihar  more  or  less  with  one  noble  work,  equally 
of  faith  and  of  art,  whose  object  was  stated  on  its  front 
to  be 

To  yindicate  Eternal  Providence, 
And  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man. 

That  is  a  theodicy,  the  attempt  to  adjust  the  ways  of  God 
to  conscience.  But  to  His  own  conscience  above  all.  That 
is  the  way  taken  in  this  book.  Its  object  is  not  to  bring 
God's  ways  to  the  bar  either  of  man's  reason  or  man's 
conscience,  but  rather  to  the  bar  where  all  reason  and  con- 
science must  go  at  last,  to  the  standard  of  a  holy  God's  own 
account  of  Himself  in  Jesus  Christ  and  His  Cross.  A  philo- 
sophical theodicy  or  vindication  of  God's  justice  has  not  yet 
been  found.  And  if  faith  wait  for  it,  the  soul  may  perish 
first.  But  a  reUgious  and  theological  theodicy  (for  here  the 
one  means  the  other)  is  not  only  not  impossible  ;  it  is  our 
only  refuge.  This  is  the  kind  of  theology  that  retains  much 
pubHc  interest  or  promise  to-day — the  justification  of  God 


▼i  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD 

by  Himself,  and  not  by  a  course  of  history  which  is  a  dim 
mixture  of  His  ways  and  our  ways,  and  where  the  cross 
lights  make  it  impossible  to  see  life  steadily  and  see  it 
whole.  The  only  vindicator  of  God  is  God.  And  His 
own  theodicy  is  in  the  Cross  of  His  Son  Jesus  Christ.  The 
problem  of  God  is  the  problem  of  history  and  of  God  in  it. 
The  doubts  that  unsettle  men  most  to-day  are  those  that  rise 
not  from  science  but  from  society,  not  from  the  irrational 
but  the  unjust.  And  the  very  nature  of  that  question  is  a 
great  step  to  the  answer.  Every  great  question  is  pointed 
in  proportion  as  it  is  moralised — as  we  are  made  to  discuss 
business  rather  than  being,  the  doings  rather  than  the  laws 
of  the  world,  soul  rather  than  substance,  and  the  con- 
science rather  than  the  processes  either  of  God  or  man. 
It  will  then  be  found  that  the  justification  of  God  to  man 
is  not  possible  except  to  the  conscience  of  man  as  justified 
by  God.  We  have  God's  justice  as  a  gift  and  not  as  a 
conclusion.  God  vindicates  His  justice  by  saving  man 
from  the  doubt  of  it,  and  not  by  demonstrating  to  him 
the  truth  of  it. 

I  have  to  express   my  thanks  to  my  colleague,  Rev. 
H.  H.  Scullard,  D.D.,  for  his  kind  service  in  revising  proof. 

P.  T.  FORSYTH. 

August  1916. 


CONTENTS 


PAoa 
OVERTURE  AND   OUTLINE,  .  .  .  •  •  1 


CHAPTEE  I 

THE  EXPECTATIONS  OF  POPULAR  RELIGION  AND  THEIR  FATE. 

RELIGION  AS  CENTRED  ON  GOD  AND  CENTRED  ON  MAN,      17 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  PROBLEMS  :  REVELATION  AND  TELEOLOGY,      ,       .     38 

CHAPTER  III 

METAPHTSIC   AND   REDEMPTION,  .  .  .  .56 

CHAPTER  IV 

WHAT   IS   REDEMPTION?  .  .  •  .  .  67 

CHAPTER  V 

SALVATION   THEOLOGICAL   BUT    NOT   SYSTEMATIC,  ,  ,  76 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE      FAILURE     OF     THE      CHURCH     AS     AN      INTERNATIONAL 

AUTHORITY,  ......  98 

Til 


viii  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD 


CHAPTER  VII 

PAOB 

TELEOLOGY  ACUTE   IN  A   THEODICY,       .  ,  .  ,         122 


CHAPTER  VIII 

PHILOSOPHICAL  THEODICY,  .  .  •  ,  ,         137 

CHAPTER  IX 

THE   ETERNAL   CRUCIALITY   OF   THE   CROSS   FOR    DESTINY,  .         151 

CHAPTER  X 

SAVING   JUDGMENT,  ,  .  .  .  .  ,176 

CHAPTER  XI 

HISTORY   AND   JUDGMENT,  .....         196 

CHAPTER  XII 

THE   CONQUEST   OF   TIME   BY   ETERNITY,  .  .  ,         217 

BIBLIOGRAPHY,  ••••••        233 


THEODICY 

OVERTURE  AND  OUTLINE 

In  the  crowd  of  modern  problems  the  individual  Christian 
may  be  content  to  leave  everything  simply  and  happily 
to  the  love  of  God,  his  Saviour,  Avho  has  done  for  his  past 
and  present  what  may  well  be  trusted  with  his  future. 
But  we  cannot  stop  there.  In  the  first  place,  the  question 
at  all  great  crises  is  not  one  of  a  soul's  future  but  of  the 
world's.  The  problem  of  his  kind  has  laid  hold  of  the 
Christian  soul.  '  Lord,  and  what  shall  this  race  do  ?  '  is 
a  very  Christian  concern.  And,  in  the  next  place,  if  the 
Christian  man  may  rest  in  a  very  plain  faith,  the  Christian 
Church  cannot.  The  consciousness  of  the  Church  has  the 
spiritual  imagination.  Its  conscience  is  in  the  great  style. 
Eternity  is  set  in  its  heart,  to  say  nothing  of  the  note  of 
Humanity.  It  thinks  and  feels  both  humanly  and  on  the 
scale  of  Eternity.  And  one  of  the  sources  of  difficulty 
and  confusion  to-day  is  that  problems  of  the  Church, 
collective  problems,  are  constantly  being  treated  amateurlj^, 
that  is  on  the  mere  individual  scale,  with  a  mere  individual 
instinct,  or  a  mere  individual  piety,  and  often  without  a 
due  individual  equipment.  They  are  treated  without  the 
trained  historic  sense,  or  the  universal  and  ethical,  or 
the  theological  and  eternal,  without  more  than  the  domestic 
range  of  concern,  whose  ethic  is  but  in  the  primary  colours. 
Of  course  (though  it  is  hard  for  any  to  evade  these  larger 
questions  to-day)  the  individual  need  not  always  raise 
them  ;   and  to  some  it  may  be  a  dangerous  hobby.     But 

A 


2  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD 

the  Church  must  raise  them,  or  at  least  it  must  face  them 
when  raised.  It  must  have  members,  servants,  and 
leaders  who  can  do  both  competently.  The  Church, 
indeed,  begins  and  ends  with  a  Gospel  which  contem- 
plates and  provokes  questions  on  that  scale.  And,  if  the 
individual  raise  such  issues,  it  must  be  with  the  Church 
mind,  it  must  be  on  the  scale  of  the  world  as  a  whole, 
which,  and  nothing  less,  is  the  great  Church's  vis-d-vis.^ 
The  inability  to  do  this  on  the  part  of  modem  individualism 
is  a  chief  source  of  the  distaste  for  theology,  and  especially 
for  St.  Paul,  who  always  envisaged  the  individual  soul  in 
the  universal  salvation.  He  was  therefore  constantly  mis- 
imderstood,  as  Jesus  Himself  was  ;  but  neither  for  that 
reason  changed  his  note,  because  the  obscurity  was  in  the 
matter  rather  than  the  style,  and  was  therefore  charged  by 
them  upon  the  spiritual  density  of  their  audience  and  not 
upon  their  own  literary  ineptness.  Jesus  spoke,  and  kept 
speaking,  as  to  wise  men  ;  and  Paul  constantly  strove  to 
speak  wisdom  among  adult  and  not  trivial  minds,  and  on 
the  scale  not  of  the  world  only  but  of  God  (1  Cor.  ii.  6). 
He  prayed  without  ceasing  that  his  recent  converts  might 
be  filled  with  the  knowledge  of  God's  will  in  all  wisdom  and 
understanding  (Col.  i.  9),  and  that  they  might  know  the 
wealth  of  the  magnificent  legacy  they  had  as  men  and 
members  of  Christ,  who  is  Head  of  all  things,  and  the 
fullness  of  both  worlds  (Eph.  i.  fin.).  The  problems  of 
the  private  life  are  often  so  intractable  because  they  are 
not  conceived  in  any  but  private  relations  ;  which  is  to 
judge  the  house  from  a  sample  brick.  The  manna  so 
hoarded  goes  wrong.  The  soul's  lot  lies  in  the  eternal 
and  universal  counsel  of  God.  And  the  first  question  still 
is  man's  chief  end,  and  the  collective  destiny  of  every 

1  It  was  this  true  Churchliness  of  the  sects  that  took  effect  in  their  inven- 
tion of  modern  missions  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Foreign 
missions  was  the  Church  in  them  saving  itself  from  the  sects,  the  world  note 
saving  them  from  the  note  worldly  and  bourgeois. 


THEODICY  3 

soul  there.  The  eternal  does  not  begin  on  the  other  side 
of  time  ;  rather  all  time  and  space  is  the  content  of 
eternity.  Faith  is  really  faith  in  that  eternal  destiny  as 
present,  and  then  in  our  part  and  place  therein  by  God's 
grace.  Immortality  means  living  on  in  Eternity  ;  it  is 
Eternity  living  on  in  us.  It  is  God  thinking  Himself, 
living  Himself  in  us.  But  we  are  apt  to  treat  God  as  if 
He  were  only  a  patron  saint  magnified,  whom  we  expect 
to  attend  to  our  affairs  if  He  is  to  retain  our  custom  and 
receive  our  worship. 

There  is  even  what  we  might  call  a  racial  egoism,  a 
self-engrossment  of  mankind  with  itself,  a  naive  and  tacit 
assumption  that  God  were  no  God  if  He  cared  for  anything 
more  than  He  did  for  His  creatures.  We  tend  to  think 
of  God  as  if  man  were  His  chief  end,  as  if  He  had  no 
right  to  a  supreme  concern  for  His  own  holy  name,  as  if 
His  prodigals  were  more  to  Him  than  His  only  begotten  Son 
in  whom  He  made  the  worlds  and  has  all  His  delight.  We 
think  and  worship  as  if  the  only  question  was  whether  God 
loves  us,  instead  of  whether  His  love  has  absolute  power 
to  give  itself  eternal  and  righteous  effect.  Modem  science 
is  especially  prone  to  remind  us  of  this  egoism  latent  in 
Christian  faith,  and  is  eager  to  prune  it.  Accordingly  we 
are  told  of  the  infinities  of  space  and  time,  amid  which 
our  earth  and  its  history  swim  but  as  a  mote  in  the  air ; 
and  we  are  urged,  with  such  knowledge,  to  moderate  our 
ideas  of  a  future,  and  our  expectations  of  divine  attention. 
Now,  though  science  is  wrong  in  asking  us  to  suppress  our 
soul  or  conscience  before  world  on  world  of  spacial  or 
temporal  existence  (because  the  spiritual  is  not  spacial), 
yet  the  advice  is  not  without  value.  There  are  con- 
siderations which  should  quell  a  crude,  racial  egoism,  and 
should  lift  mankind  out  of  the  self-absorption  which 
blights  and  shrivels  the  individual.  But  they  are  not 
considerations  of  the  Creation  but  of  its  Creator,  not  of 
a  Universe  but  of  a  Sovereign  God,  who  is  so  much  to  us 


4  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD 

because  He  is  more  to  Himself,  and  whose  love  is  infinite 
because  it  is  holy,  and  it  must  be  hallowed,  even  if  He 
spare  not  His  Son.  His  Son  spared  not  Himself  in  the 
hallowing  of  that  name.  It  was  the  first  function  of  His 
Cross.  And  so  He  was  Saviour — because  He  loved  God 
more  than  man,  and  glorified  His  name  over  all  weal  of 
ours.  We  have  no  fmal  weal  but  our  share  in  that 
worship  and  glory  of  the  Father  by  the  Son. 

A  world  catastrophe  and  judgment  of  the  first  rank  like 
the  present  war  is  still  in  the  hand  and  service  of  God,  in 
so  far  as  it  forces  the  soul  through  its  individual  faith  into 
concern  about  a  world  providence  and  a  world  salvation. 
How  do  we  stand  to-day  to  the  old  dilemma,  '  If  He  has 
power  to  stop  these  things  and  does  not.  He  is  not  good ; 
if  He  is  good,  and  does  not.  He  has  not  power '  ?  It  is 
well  that  a  soul's  solitary  religion  should  be  driven  to  be  a 
sohdarj^  and  racial,  that  the  cell  should  reahse  the  hive, 
that  atomic  belief  should  widen  to  a  common  faith.  It  is 
well  that  even  a  group-faith  should  rise  to  the  faith  of  a 
Church,  and  that  a  Church's  message  should  be  enlarged 
to  face  a  world  crisis,  and  roused  to  the  dimensions  of  a 
world  Gospel  and  a  Majesty  divine. 

Village  politics  and  village  piety  have  been  set  aside 
for  the  moment  by  the  question  of  Europe  and  of  civiHsa- 
tion.  And  it  was  time.  For  thought  was  raising  much 
larger  questions  than  a  kindly  and  pedestrian  piety  could 
cope  with — questions  not  only  beyond  the  dear  old  piety  of 
Hodge,  but  also  beyond  the  new  piety  of  culture,  with  its 
mild  anti-theology,  and  its  modest  discipleship  where  we 
need  a  bold  and  humble  apostolate.  The  nemesis  of  an 
anti-theological  religion  is  that  it  has  no  resources  in  a 
crisis  except  pale  quietism  or  ruddy  patriotism.  It  follows 
the  saint  or  the  drum.  It  retires  among  mystics,  or  it  goes 
out  with  a  flushed  nationalism.  But  its  scale  of  business 
cannot  handle  large  orders.  It  has  not  resources  for  a 
foreign  trade.     It  gravitates  to  the  retail  business.     It  has 


THEODICY  5 

more  instinct  for  missions,  for  instance,  than  power  to 
maintain  them  or  manage  them.  It  deals  with  the  minor 
matters  which  (so  to  say)  draw  only  on  the  intelligence 
and  tact  of  the  travellers  ;  it  has  not  a  policy  which  re- 
flects the  genius  of  the  partners  and  directors  in  a  vast 
concern.  To  drop  metaphor,  the  attractive  piety  of  in- 
cipient culture,  with  its  atmosphere  of  young  bustle,  good 
form,  gentle  faith,  genial  love,  kindly  conference,  and 
popular  publications,  is  without  the  great  note  of  New 
Testament  realism  and  imagination ;  and  it  is  therefore 
at  an  utter  loss  when  all  the  world  is  shocked  and  forced 
upon  the  question  of  a  theodicy.  What  can  it  do  in  the 
swellings  of  Jordan  ?  It  applies  the  commonplaces  of  a 
pacific  Christianity  offhand  to  world  movements,  with  a 
grasp  neither  of  the  Gospel  nor  of  the  world.  *  Too  white, 
for  the  flower  of  life  is  red.' 

From  these  we  turn  in  vain  to  the  philosophers  of  a 
larger  horizon,  whose  ideal  theories  and  optimist  hopes 
from  an  expanding  evolution  or  a  spiritual  refinement  have 
received  such  a  shattering  blow.  Optimism  is  then  found 
not  to  be  the  same  thing  as  courage.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  pessimists,  who  were  looked  on  as  cranks,  especially 
by  the  established  philosophers,  find  their  account  richly 
in  the  situation — the  people  whose  whole  view  of  life  rests 
on  the  denial  of  any  possible  theodicy  or  moral  solution, 
and  ends  in  cosmic  dissolution. 

The  effect  of  the  present  unparalleled  disaster  to  the 
world  is  that  of  every  judgment  of  God.  It  will  sift  and 
part.  Many  who  are  but  lightly  persuaded  Christians  will 
drop  out,  as  if  a  man  had  leaned  on  a  wall  and  a  snake 
from  it  bit  him.  It  will  make  those  who  doubted  and 
challenged  to  deny  and  despair,  especially  if  they  shirked 
action  and  hung  back  from  the  field  ;  and  it  will  make 
many  of  those  who  believed  but  in  progress,  or  trusted 
but  on  traditional  grounds,  and  were  only  comforted  but 
never  captured  by  their  belief,  try  to  believe  harder  still 


6  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD 

on  their  old  lines.  While  the  elect,  renomicing  a  syste- 
matic apolog3%  will  take  great  words,  and  say  (with  the 
supreme  empiricist  of  Grace),  '  Even  so,  Father,  so  it  hath 
seemed  good  in  Thy  sight.'  But  what  was  within  that 
word  of  sublime  humility  and  victory  ?  And  what  came 
from  its  heart  to  be  the  word  of  His  very  apostolate,  who 
were  the  intimate  trustees  of  His  final  world  revelation  ? 
What  is  His  message  in  those  who  have  some  right  to 
speak  from  the  penetralia  of  the  Church  and  its  Bible  ? 
How  do  they  answer  the  very  natural  question  of  the 
public,  whether  we  can  still  believe  in  God's  government 
of  the  world  and  His  destiny  for  it  ?  It  is  a  question  so 
deeply  natural  that  it  is  beyond  nature  (unless  nature  can 
explain  itself).  It  can  have  no  answer  outside  the  grace 
that  transcends  nature.  It  has  none  for  those  whose 
religion  is  mercy  without  majesty  and  love  without  either 
power,  sanctity,  or  judgment.  What  is  God's  own 
theodicy.  His  final  theodicy.  His  Self- justification  to  the 
world  ?  WTiat  is  to  be  our  final  judgment  about  a  final 
judgment  by  God  upon  all  such  things,  and  within  them  ? 
How  are  we  to  be  saved,  amid  the  collapse,  into  a  belief 
in  salvation  ?  It  is  the  most  extreme  crisis  for  faith — 
how  great  we  do  not  yet  realise.  And  the  serious  people 
will  not  grudge  that  the  answer  should  sound  extreme,  that 
it  should  not  be  as  obvious  as  a  journal,  that  it  come  from 
faith  and  from  faith's  inmost  citadel,  and  that  it  should 
seem  foreign  to  our  untaxed  thought  and  common  hours. 
Only  an  extreme  position  can  meet  an  extreme  situation — 
so  long  as  we  can  make  it  good. 

And  the  attempt  to  make  it  good  is  worth  while.  It  is 
confessed  scepticism  of  both  the  Church  and  of  the  Gospel, 
to  sweep  its  ministry  into  the  ranks  of  war.  Those  who 
are  toiling  in  mind  and  suffering  in  spirit  to  provide  from 
the  Gospel,  by  thought,  comfort,  or  taxing  prayer,  some 
real  and  staying  power  in  the  face  of  all  the  facts  of  the 
hour  are  not  outside  the  soldier  host  who  so  finely  answer 


THEODICY  7 

the  public  need  and  call.  They  are  of  the  combatants 
and  not  of  the  drones.  They  are  angels  of  the  Lord  of 
Hosts,  if  not  His  captains.  They  are  reservists  against 
the  hour  when  the  trial  of  faith  may  become  even  more 
acute,  when  native  courage  begins  to  flag,  and  faith  must 
be  a  song  in  the  night  that  opens  the  prison-gates.  To 
speculate  at  such  a  time  on  the  psychology  of  the  Trinity 
might  be  but  monastic.  But  to  re-interrogate  the  Word 
of  the  historic  Gospel  for  its  word  to  the  historic  time,  to 
leave  the  theosophies  which  rule  the  mystic  hour  for  a 
theodicy  with  a  historic  base,  a  moral  genius,  and  a  mystic 
power — that  is  to  be  a  true  chaplain  to  the  Lord's  host. 
To  justify  God  is  the  best  and  deepest  way  to  fortify 
men.  It  provides  the  moral  resource  and  stay  which  is 
the  one  thing  at  last.  With  open  face  to  see  the  glory  of 
God  in  things  as  they  are,  to  blink  nothing  of  the  terror 
and  yet  to  be  sure  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  with  all  our 
heart — that  is  more  for  the  courage  of  man  than  any 
nationahsm  or  any  patriotism  when  heart  fails  and  grief 
benumbs.  Since  the  civil  wars  there  has  been  no  such 
time  in  England.  And  we  came  through  these  only  upon 
the  puritan  faith  which  a  long  peace  and  a  thin  culture 
have  now  drowned  delicately  as  in  a  butt  of  Malmsey 
wine. 

The  solution  of  the  great  world  juncture  is  at  last  a 
religious  solution.  And,  being  a  historic  juncture,  it  con- 
cerns the  Kingdom  of  God  and  God's  provision  for  it  in 
history.  It  taxes  all  the  resources  that  faith  has,  but  it 
settles  us  in  a  certainty  which  is  very  much  in  the  world  but 
not  of  it.  The  Church  will  come  out  of  the  present  crisis 
both  chastened  and  exalted  if  it  takes  itself  seriously 
enough,  and  holds  itself  as  morally  greater  than  soul, 
family,  or  State.  For  it  is  the  only  society  on  earth 
whose  one  and  direct  object  is  the  Kingdom  of  God — ^if, 
indeed,  it  be  not  that  Kingdom  in  the  making.  There  is 
much  speculation  about  the  situation  after  the  war,  and 


8  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD 

especially  about  the  need  for  an  effective  international. 
And  most  of  it  leaves  the  Church  out  of  the  question,  or 
any  spiritual  authority.  Why  ?  From  the  sand-blindness 
of  those  without,  and  the  uncertainty  of  those  within  it. 

One  of  the  obvious  j^et  great  ironies  of  life  is  the  spectacle 
offered  in  a  war  which  breaks  in  upon  an  unprecedented 
craving  of  Western  Christianity  for  spiritual  unity.  As 
religion  seemed  to  be  growing  more  ashamed  than  ever 
before  of  its  divisions,  civilisation,  always  prone  to  mock 
the  disunion  of  the  Churches  it  has  demoralised,  cuts 
across  its  path  with  a  strife  such  as  the  world  has  never 
seen.  Christianity,  drowsing  often  but  never  dead,  and 
now  re-awaking  to  its  function  as  the  human  bond,  is 
struck  in  the  face  by  a  paganism  which  is  divisive  and 
deadly  on  a  scale  never  yet  known.  The  Churches,  weary 
of  much  triviality  and  impotence,  yet  unforsaken  by  the 
instinct  of  greatness  and  authority  in  their  Gospel,  were 
moving  to  recover  its  native  note,  and  lead  the  great 
irenic  of  the  race;  when,  suddenly,  their  generous,  if 
sometimes  crude,  enthusiasm  is  shattered  for  the  time  by 
the  crash,  not  only  of  the  guns,  but  of  the  moral  collapse 
of  a  leading  Christian  nation.  The  situation  is  alluded  to 
here  chiefly  because  it  rouses  all  kinds  of  questions,  which 
peace  muffles  in  sentiment,  about  the  brotherhood  of 
man,  the  destiny  of  the  race,  the  purpose  of  God,  or 
even  a  moral  order  in  the  world.  Is  there  such  a  thing 
as  the  unity  of  the  race  reflecting  the  unity  and  power 
of  God  ?  Is  it  feasible  or  even  credible  ?  Is  a  practic- 
able conviction  of  it  at  present  possible  ?  Is  there  any 
basis  of  human  brotherhood  beyond  the  dream  that 
vanishes  at  the  first  shock  ?  Is  the  chief  result  of 
western  civilisation  to  put  the  world's  peace  further  off 
than  ever  before  ?  Is  civilisation  pacific  in  its  nature,  or 
only  better  than  before  at  the  bad  old  game  ?  Is  human 
concord  but  a  fantasy  of  that  ideaUsm  which  passes  down 


THEODICY  9 

through  culture  to  cruelty,  as  in  the  Italian  republics,  and 
which,  when  it  comes  to  historic  business,  seems  to  issue 
in  a  storm  of  '  f rightfulness '  and  in  the  blight  of  that  moral 
cynicism  which  dogs  intellectualism  ?  Is  there  a  moral 
order,  or  is  the  only  curb  on  individual  egoism  a  national 
egoism  which  makes  a  race  its  own  God,  and  patriotism 
the  sole  religion,  severing  it  completely  and  expressly 
from  moral  dignity  or  control  ?  Does  humanism  end 
practically  in  the  loss  of  humanity  ? 

A  crowd  of  such  questions  presses  in  upon  us  from 
behind  all  the  political  reconstructions  so  freely  pursued 
without  reference  to  a  Kingdom  of  God.  And  they  seem 
often  to  become  but  more  acute  when  we  do  carry  them 
into  the  presence  of  God,  and  consider  them  in  the  light 
of  His  supreme  revelation  of  mastery  and  destiny.  If  man 
is  a  failure,  is  God  too  ?  Is  love  destined  to  dominion  ? 
Or,  perhaps,  have  we  understood  this  revelation  ?  Is  our 
standard  sound  ?  I  venture  to  discuss  this  in  these  chap- 
ters. And  I  would  first  offer  an  outline,  or  overture  in 
advance,  of  what  I  hope  to  say.  In  many  forms  my  belief 
will  appear  that  the  site  of  revelation  and  the  solution  of 
history  is  to  be  found,  not  in  the  moral  order  of  the  world, 
but  in  its  moral  crisis,  tragedy,  and  great  divine  commedia  ; 
not  even  in  the  conscience,  but  in  its  Christ  and  His  Cross. 

It  seems  quite  certain  that  it  is  only  a  living  faith  in 
the  right  kind  of  unity,  unity  with  power,  that  can  bring 
to  the  race  public  peace  and  concord.  What  is  that 
unity,  and  where  ?  WTiy  should  we  think  mankind  a 
unity  ?  It  is  not  natural  to  the  struggle  for  life.  It  is 
not  how  we  begin.  We  begin  as  warring  atoms.  Are  we 
to  subside  to  the  same  state  at  the  end,  and  die  in  the 
bed  where  we  were  bom  ?  Is  the  race's  unity  assured 
us  either  in  its  origin  or  in  its  destiny  ?  Do  we  know  enough 
about  either  ?  Or  shall  we  find  it  in  the  organic  unity  of 
thought,  in  the  idea  ?   That  line  has  ended  in  the  Germany 


10  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD 

we  see.  Or  can  we  take  stand  on  the  elemental  emotions 
and  passions,  on  the  sjrmpathies  ?  But  is  hate  not  the  twin 
of  love  ?  Does  the  touch  of  nature  really  make  the  world 
kin  when  we  come  to  business  and  when  interests  cross  ?  Is 
it  not  as  natural  to  destroy  as  to  help  ?  What  turns  the 
balance  to  the  helping  side  ?  Or,  again,  with  a  vague 
and  hasty  faith  in  progress,  shall  we  look  for  the  index 
of  a  racial  unity  in  the  spread  of  civilisation  and  the 
organisation  of  common  interests  ?  This  last  is  an  argu- 
ment that  nobody  is  very  Ukely  to  press  at  present. 

Shall  we  then  turn  and  question  the  history  of  the  race  ? 
Is  man's  unity  Adamic,  in  a  common  progenitor  ?  Is  it 
due  to  a  single  and  common  creation  ?  Or  shall  we  look 
for  a  plan  of  beneficent  progress  looming  up  through  man's 
career  ?  History  shows  no  such  plan,  especially  in  the 
moral  region  where  we  need  it  most.  Mere  historicism 
does  not  even  give  us  a  standard  by  which  we  can  tell 
what  is  progress  and  what  is  not.  If  enHghtenment  seem 
emerging  at  any  stage,  it  is  crushed  thereupon  by  world 
wars,  Napoleonic  or  Teutonic.  And  it  is  not  light  for  its 
own  sake  that  we  need,  but  something  that  light  reveals. 
The  great  matter  is  neither  the  eye  nor  the  gleam,  but  the 
thing,  the  reaUty,  the  soul,  the  power,  the  God.  Is  there 
a  growth  then  in  the  great  sympathies  ?  In  the  reign  of 
righteousness  ?  We  might  have  thought  so  till  recently. 
But  even  then  only  by  shutting  our  eyes  to  what  Europe's 
armaments  meant,  the  world-wide,  competitive  mammon- 
ism,  the  cult  of  material  efficiency,  and  the  growth  of 
terrorism  in  the  social  action  of,  for  instance,  the  women 
and  the  workmen.  In  the  course  of  history  it  is  hard  to 
trace  any  unitary  and  beneficent  plan  of  operations.  War, 
which  is  the  triumph  of  plan,  is  moral  anarchy.  Nothing 
is  so  efficient  as  a  bomb.  CiviHsation,  as  mere  organisation 
and  machinery,  ends  there.  It  is  deadly  bombast  (if  the 
play  were  allowed)  worked,  like  a  Zeppelin,  by  inflation. 
As  we  become  civiHsed,  we  grow  in  power  over  every- 


THEODICY  11 

thing  but  ourselves,  we  grow  in  everything  but  power 
to  control  our  power  over  everything.  Man,  from  the 
land,  can  harness  the  seas  to  serve  him,  but  the  winds  and 
the  waves  do  not  obey  him. 

Shall  we,  then,  in  search  of  a  unity  of  the  race,  turn  from 
questioning  either  human  origins  or  the  historic  career  ? 
From  the  past  shall  we  turn  to  the  future  ?  Shall  we  turn 
to  seek  a  common  destiny — a  goal  of  values  if  not  a  scheme 
of  operations,  a  meaning  if  not  a  system  of  the  world? 
But  if  we  could  scarcely  find  a  conspiracy  of  righteousness 
in  the  historic  career  we  do  know,  shall  we  succeed  better 
in  speculating  about  the  trend  of  a  future  we  do  not  ? 
Does  the  study  of  history  breed  the  spirit  of  prophecy  ? 
If  a  sure  past  do  not  promise  a  reign  of  love,  is  there  more 
hope  from  a  conjectural  future  ?  Is  there  then  some 
combination  of  past  and  future  in  our  hands,  of  life's  deep 
ground  and  its  final  goal  ?  If  the  course  of  history  promise 
little  by  induction,  is  there  a  point  of  history  which  does 
more  by  insight ;  which  at  once  exhibits  a  goal  both  of 
God's  purpose  and  man's  progress,  and  has  power  to 
make  that  goal  realise  itself,  power  to  make  it,  while  goal, 
at  the  same  time  the  active  ground  of  the  historic  career  ? 
If  we  have  no  self-projected  goal  which  is  more  than  an 
ideal,  have  we  one  given,  descending  from  God,  to  be 
within  us  the  final  principle  and  deep  djniamic  of  human 
growth  ?  Is  it  there,  in  a  redeemed  destiny,  that  we 
find  a  faith  and  a  unity  refused  by  our  first  origin  or  our 
long  career  ? 

Such  at  least  is  the  Christian  faith,  which  is  the  religion 
of  a  historic  point  in  Christ's  Cross,  and  of  a  moral  point 
in  the  human  conscience,  with  their  crisis  of  grace  and 
guilt.  The  focus  of  the  race  is  moral,  in  the  conscience. 
'  Morality  is  the  nature  of  things.'  Guilt  is  therefore 
the  last  problem  of  the  race,  its  one  central  moral 
crisis ;    and   the   Cross   that   destroys    it    is    the   race's 


12  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD 

historic  crisis  and  turiiing-point.  Were  there  no  sin, 
there  would  be  no  war.  Were  there  no  world  sin, 
there  would  be  no  world  war.  War  makes  at  least  one 
contribution  to  human  salvation — it  is  sin's  apocalypse. 
It  reveals  the  greatness  and  the  awfulness  of  evil,  and 
corrects  that  light  and  easy  conception  of  it  which  had 
come  to  mark  culture  and  belittle  redemption.  This  war's 
revelation  of  human  wickedness  may  perhaps  do  some- 
thing to  reUeve  us  of  a  comely  and  aesthetic  t^^pe  of  religion 
which  is  founded,  not  on  a  salvation,  but  on  the  divine  excel- 
lence of  that  glorious  creature  man,  and  on  the  facilities 
for  his  evolution.  It  may  recall  us  to  the  estimate  of 
Iiim  presented  by  the  very  existence  of  Christianity  as  a 
religion,  which  declares  his  one  need  to  be  redemption. 

'  I  still,  to  suppose  that  true  for  my  part 
See  reasons  and  reasons ;  this,  to  begin, 

'Tis  the  faith  that  launched  pointblank  her  dart 
At  the  head  of  a  lie — taught  original  sin 

The  corruption  of  man's  heart. ' 

The  final  revelation  of  God  is  a  redemption,  and  not  a 
mere  manifestation.  It  is  something  done  and  not  just 
shown.  And  it  is  effected  in  man  at  the  depth  of  his 
moral  despair,  and  not  p^t  the  height  of  his  aesthetic  pride 
and  cultured  insight. 

All  deep  and  earnest  experience  shows  us,  and  not 
Christianity  alone,  that  the  unity  of  the  race  lies  in  its 
moral  centre,  its  moral  crisis,  and  its  moral  destiny.  It 
is  in  the  moral  region  that  all  our  beneficent  hopes  and 
efforts  for  others  wreck  ;  we  can  deal  with  their  bad  luck, 
but  not  with  their  moral  failure.  It  is  there  we  find  that 
the  deepest  thing  in  life  is  not  an  ordered  process  but  a 
tragic  colhsion  and  despair.  '  Thou  hast  delivered  my 
soul  from  the  lowest  hell.'  Life  is  not  a  mere  movement 
but  a  battle.  And  it  is  there  that  the  battle  must  be 
won  which  carries  sound  culture  and  everything  else  with 


THEODICY  13 

it.  All  comes  back  to  the  conscience,  to  a  will  in  relation 
to  a  Will.  The  only  universal  religion  is  the  religion  of 
the  conscience  and  its  redemption.  It  is  a  religion  of 
moral  redemption.  All  its  affectional  power  and  beauty 
centres  there,  in  holy  love.  And  the  Church  is  divided, 
and  the  world  is  at  strife,  because  this  note  has  been 
lost  from  Christianity,  or  made  other  than  central  and 
creative.  Almost  all  who  are  driven  to  unfaith  by 
the  horrors  of  history  seem  to  have  cherished  a  faith 
based  entirely  on  the  teaching  of  Christ ;  they  had  been 
cherishing,  that  is,  not  a  faith  but  an  ideal,  not  a  power 
but  a  programme.  The  Gospel  owes  its  world  power  to  its 
revealing  the  righteousness  of  God  in  action  on  the  Cross 
(Rom.  i.  16,  17).  There  springs  the  dynamic  for  the 
Christian  ideal.  There  rises  the  new  creation  that  reahses 
it.  It  is  a  matter  of  righteousness.  If  there  is  a  unity  of 
the  race,  its  source  is  the  unity  of  God  (that  is,  His  moral 
holiness)  ;  its  power  is  righteousness,  its  field  is  the 
conscience,  and  its  warrant  is  in  God's  treatment  of  the 
conscience  once  for  all  in  Christ's  Cross.  The  root  of 
conscience  is  in  our  sense  of  responsibility,  our  sense  of 
being  trustees  and  subjects  —  i.e.  our  sense  of  divine 
poAver  and  majesty  over  us.  We  are  not  here  for  free- 
dom, but  for  responsibility.  We  are  responsible  for 
our  very  freedom.  It  is  in  his  conscience  then  that 
man  is  one,  and,  above  all,  in  what  is  done  with  his 
conscience  hy  the  power  it  owns  supreme.  Conscience  is 
conscience  because  it  ovitis  to  that  power  an  obligation, 
which,  as  a  matter  of  actual  fact,  is  guilt.  Morality 
culminates  in  repentance.  Human  unity  is  therefore  one 
of  deliverance.  It  is  one  of  dependence,  true,  but  of  a 
sinner's  dependence,  of  forgiveness,  reconciliation,  re- 
generation, the  sense  of  a  descending  power  and  a  giving, 
saving  grace.  We  do  not  achieve  unity  by  our  resource, 
we  receive  it  as  a  gift  to  our  spiritual  poverty,  and  as  a 
creation    out   of   our   last   distress   of    dissolution.     Our 


14  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD 

destiny  is  found  in  our  tragedy  and  not  in  our  idyll,  not 
in  our  hour  of  triumph  but  in  our  depth  of  distress.  If 
man  is  one  in  conscience,  he  is  not  one  hy  conscience  ; 
for  by  itself  it  reveals  guilt  and  division.  The  luiity  is  a 
unity  effected  by  God  in  conscience,  in  the  tragedy  of 
our  conscience,  and  not  simply  its  voice  or  law.  It  is 
His  gift  of  release  to  conscience.  His  reconstruction  of  it. 
It  is  not  at  last  a  matter  of  our  conscience  but  of  Christ 
in  our  conscience.  It  is  a  divine  reconcination,  but  a 
reconciliation  of  the  conscience  more  even  than  of  the 
affections  (cp.  2  Cor.  v.  19  with  21)  ;  it  is  a  recall 
from  guilt  and  not  from  mere  coldness.  And  it  is  a  recon- 
ciliation which  means  re-creation  and  not  mere  rehabiUta- 
tion,  as  being  the  birth  of  a  power  in  us  and  not  merely 
the  gift  to  us  of  a  state.  It  is  the  reconciliation  given  to 
the  conscience  of  the  race  by  a  holy  grace,  which  must 
judge  conscience,  but  which  judges  it  in  Christ  and  upon 
Him.  This  reconciliation  comes  to  a  head  in  our  worship 
of  a  moral  Redeemer,  and  the  faith  of  a  destiny  of  righteous- 
ness, which,  though  now  working  in  history,  is  not  to  be 
traced  on  its  course  but  trusted  at  its  source  in  Him. 
Paul,  in  the  whole  of  Romans,  holds  closely  together  the 
universality  of  the  Gospel  and  the  seat  of  its  power  in  the 
righteousness  of  God  (Rom.  i.  17). 

That  moral  certainty  of  God's  conquering  hohness  is  the 
only  foundation  of  any  faith  in  man's  unity,  when  the  last 
pinch  comes.  It  is  not  in  himself  but  in  his  God  as  his 
Saviour.  It  is  his  unity  in  a  Redeemer  and  a  Redemption, 
a  unity  not  natural  but  supernatural,  not  by  evolutionary 
career  but  by  mortal  crisis,  not  in  the  first  creation  but  the 
second,  not  in  generation  but  regeneration.  Nothing  can 
give  us  footing  or  hope  amid  the  degeneration  of  man  but 
his  regeneration  by  God.  God's  method  with  evil  is  not 
prevention  but  cure.  And  this  is  the  note  of  the  Church, 
moral  reconciliation,  holy  regeneration,  upon  a  world 
scale — the  new  Humanity.     This  faith  is  the  only  con- 


THEODICY  15 

dition,  nay,  the  only  creator,  of  Church  unity ;  and  it  is 
the  only  creator,  through  the  Church's  Gospel,  of  the  unity 
of  the  race  and  its  peace.  In  the  crises  which  shake  all  the 
foundations  of  society,  the  Church  of  the  Gospel  alone  is 
sure  of  the  end.  Augustine  wrote  the  City  of  God  after  the 
sack  of  Rome.  But  even  the  Church  has  neither  a  word 
to  say  nor  a  power  to  act  except  by  this  evangelical  faith 
and  this  theological  ethic.  If  the  redeeming  act  of  God  is 
but  a  theological  theme,  then  the  Church  must  be  as 
ineffectual  and  negligible  as  any  community  of  hobbyists  or 
essayists  may  be.  But  with  a  theological  faith  in  God's  real 
act  and  presence  we  have  the  world  goal  in  advance,  with- 
out such  a  faith  we  have  no  world  goal  assured  ;  and  there- 
fore we  have  no  world  ethic,  for  lack  of  a  world  standard. 
And  the  ethic  of  the  State  then  becomes  absolute,  as 
it  is  made  in  German}^ — there  being  neither  a  holy  God 
nor  a  sohdary  race  to  overrule  national  egoism.  And  yet 
the  neglect,  and  even  contempt,  of  such  an  evangeUcal 
ground  has  spread  from  the  world  into  the  Church  itself. 
And  so  the  first  work  before  the  Church  is  to  set  her  own 
house  in  order,  to  return  to  the  Cross  as  the  source  of  the 
Spirit,  to  moraUse  her  conceptions  of  a  Holy  Spirit,  and, 
by  courting  anew  at  such  a  Gospel  her  own  moral  re- 
generation, to  acquire  that  note  of  moral  authority  which 
gives  practical  power  and  historic  weight  to  all  her  mystic 
insight  and  her  sympathetic  help.  It  is  not  help  that 
either  the  Church  or  the  world  needs  most.  It  is  power. 
It  is  life.  It  is  moral  regeneration.  If  the  greatest  boon 
in  the  world  is  Christ's  Holy  Father,  the  greatest  curse  in 
the  world  is  man's  unfihal  guilt.  Whatever,  therefore, 
undoes  the  guilt  is  the  solution  of  the  world.  Everything 
will  follow  upon  that  peace  and  power.  The  righteous- 
ness which  reconciles  and  secures  everything  is  the  holi- 
ness which  destroys  guilt  in  its  very  exposure.  It  is  God's 
holy  and  atoning  love  making  a  new  world  in  Christ's 
Cross. 


16  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD 

This  means,  for  the  Church,  not  onlj^  a  fresh  submission 
of  her  conduct  to  the  testing  light  of  the  Grospel,  but  a 
fresh  grasp  and  construction  of  that  Gospel  ;  so  as  to 
bring,  indeed,  the  old  searching  ray  to  bear  on  her  deeds, 
but,  still  more,  so  as  to  create  and  kindle  a  new  ideal, 
standard,  and  power  of  moral  life  in  the  spiritual  society 
itselL 


I.]  EXPECTATIONS  OF  POPULAR  RELIGION  17 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  EXPECTATIONS  OP  POPULAR  RELIGION  AND  THEIR 
FATE.  RELIGION  AS  CENTRED  ON  GOD  AND  CENTRED 
ON  MAN 

A  FIRST-RATE  Calamity  to  humanity  like  a  European  war 
is  to  the  Christian  insight  the  suicide  of  natural  civilisa- 
tion, which  always  tends  to  die  dissolved  in  its  own  keen 
dialectic,  or  stupefied  by  its  own  crude  surfeit.  It  is  God 
in  judgment  of  godlessness.  But  it  must  create  in  many 
minds,  whose  faith,  perhaps,  has  owed  more  to  Christian 
culture  than  to  its  moral  Gospel,  something  beyond  a 
doubt — a  denial,  of  a  God  and  Providence  in  the  world. 
Of  Providence  and  God,  I  say.  \\^en  the  one  goes,  the 
other  goes ;  for  there  is  no  place  for  a  God  who  reigns 
but  does  not  govern.  If  the  belief  in  a  Providence  goes, 
there  is  little  occasion  for  belief  in  a  God.  Not  as  though 
belief  in  a  God  rested  on  a  traceable  Providence.  It  does 
not.  But  such  belief  is  the  only  ground  for  trusting  a 
Providence  whose  ways  are  beyond  us  and  His  strategy 
past  finding  out.  We  do  not  find  God  from  His  provi- 
dential conduct  of  history.  We  cannot  discern  His  plan 
of  campaign.  We  cannot  follow  out  His  thought,  how- 
ever we  trust  His  will.  The  tactics  of  Providence  cannot 
be  traced.  His  judgments  pass  knowledge.  But,  *  where 
God's  judgments  are  not  to  be  discovered,  His  counsel  is 
not  to  be  neglected '  (Augustine).  His  purpose  we  have, 
and  His  heart.  We  have  Him,  And  we  find  Him  elsewhere 
than  in  a  sustained  policy  of  affairs — at  a  revelationary 
point  of  history.     But  at  the  same  time,  if  we  could  find 


18  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

no  trace  of  His  conduct  of  man's  career,  or  no  possibility 
of  it,  we  might  well  ask  whether  His  existence  was  called 
for  at  all.  Cui  bono  ?  If  the  victory  went  to  the  mere 
tutelar  deity  of  a  race,  and  not  to  the  God  of  the  Kingdom, 
there  would  be  plenty  of  people  to  say  at  present  that 
the  world  is  no  better  for  such  a  God. 

I  say  it  is  inevitable  that  world  calamities  should 
encourage  the  denials  of  those  who  denied  before.  Their 
shock  also  makes  sceptics  of  many  whose  behef  had  arisen 
and  gone  on  only  under  conditions  of  fine  weather,  happy 
piety,  humming  progress,  and  of  a  rehgion  drawing  but  on 
the  sjnnpathies  and  not  the  ethic  of  the  soul,  on  heart 
without  conscience.  Such  a  result  is  inevitable  for  many, 
with  the  presuppositions  that  underlie  much  popular  faith, 
and  that  have  even  come  to  dominate  modem  faith  at 
levels  higher  than  the  popular.  For  what  is  the  tacit 
imderstanding  in  current  religion  which  leaves  it  at  the 
mercy  of  social  or  other  convulsions  ?  I  have  hinted  it 
in  the  preceding  lecture.  In  theological  language  it  is 
anthropocentric  religion,  which  has  displaced  theocentric. 
That  is  to  say,  it  is  man's  preoccupation  with  humanity 
and  its  spiritual  civilisation  or  culture.  It  is  the  religious 
egoism  of  Humanity,  i.e.  man's  absorption  with  himself, 
instead  of  with  God,  His  purpose,  His  service,  and  His 
glory.  It  is  a  greater  anxiety  to  have  God  on  our  side 
than  to  be  upon  His.  We  are  willing  to  owe  many  things 
to  God,  only  not  ourselves  and  our  destiny  absolutely. 

Everything  has  come  to  turn  on  man's  welfare  instead 
of  God's  worship,  on  man  with  God  to  help  him  and  not 
on  God  with  man  to  wait  upon  Him.  The  fundamental 
heresy  of  the  day,  now  deep  in  Christian  belief  itself,  is 
humanist.  It  is  the  humanism  and  humanitarianism 
which  events  are  now  reducing  to  an  absurdity  as  a 
religion.  This  tendency  may  have  been  prepared  by  the 
CathoUc  principle  that  God  became  Man  that  man  might 


I.]  EXPECTATIONS  OF  POPULAR  RELIGION  19 

become  Grod,  or  by  Pelagian  synergism  ;  but  it  represents 
the  extreme  reaction,  under  Rousseau,  from  that  Jesuitism 
and  that  Calvinism  which,  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
saved  religion  in  both  camps  by  beginning  and  ending 
with  God  and  His  glory  instead  of  man  and  his  weal. 
Elated  by  our  modern  mastery  of  nature  and  cult  of  genius, 
and  ridden  by  the  superstition  of  progress  (now  unseated), 
we  came  to  start  with  that  excellent  creature,  man,  his 
wonderful  resources,  his  broadening  freedom,  his  widening 
heart,  his  conquest  of  creation,  and  his  expanding  career. 
And,  as  with  man  we  begin,  with  man  we  really  end.  God 
is  there  but  to  promote  and  crown  this  development  of 
man,  if  there  be  a  God  at  aU.  To  this  has  come  a  Gospel 
of  mere  Fatherhood,  of  divine  value  without  divine  right, 
of  God  as  an  asset  instead  of  a  King,  a  God  of  great  kind- 
ness without  absolute  Majesty,  of  swift  pity  without  holy 
mercy,  of  sacrificing  love  without  atoning  righteousness 
or  reigning  power.  '  Ye  have  made  me  to  serve.'  The 
Father  is  the  banker  of  a  spendthrift  race.  He  is  there 
to  draw  upon,  to  save  man's  career  at  the  points  where 
it  is  most  threatened.  He  is  a  God  of  nothing  but  loving 
sacrifice  for  His  son  man,  who,  with  such  a  Father,  grows 
up  the  spoilt  child  that  parental  service  without  parental 
demand  is  sure  to  make.  To  that  has  come  the  Father- 
hood, though  for  Christ  its  first  claim,  and  the  first  peti- 
tion in  His  prayer,  was  that  it  should  be  hallowed  and 
not  exploited.  It  was  the  one  issue  between  Christ  and 
Israel.  He  would  sanctify  God,  they  would  use  Him.  They 
had  most  things  in  common  with  Christ  but  that  object, 
as  indeed  we  have.  But  the  thing  they  had  not  wrecked 
all  they  had.  They  had  a  zeal  for  God,  and  a  God  benign. 
And  to  our  zeal  He  has  become  a  God  of  loving-kindness 
more  than  of  loving  power,  of  everlasting  pity  and  no  moral 
majesty,  no  holiness.  He  is  of  infinite  value  to  us  with- 
out absolute  right.  He  is  Father  in  a  sense  that  leaves  no 
room  for  love's  severity,  its  searching  judgment,  or  its 


20  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

absolute  sovereignty  with  the  right  to  make  demand  on 
man  and  no  reason  given,  and  no  Hght  shown  on  the  spot. 
He  is  Father  only  so  long  as  He  meets  the  instincts  and 
aspirations  of  man's  heart.  We  are  familiar  with  the 
heathen  habit  of  beating  the  god  who  is  too  stingy  to  the 
worshippers'  prayers.  It  survives  in  unexpected  quarters 
at  the  severest  strains.  '  If  God  permit  my  heartbreak, 
He  shall  have  no  more  of  my  faith.  If  He  put  out  the  light 
of  my  home,  He  is  too  heartless  for  my  heart.  If  He 
permit  the  wreck,  by  its  own  unsupported  weight,  of  any- 
thing which  my  heart  calls  so  good  as  humanitarian 
civihsation,  He  is  no  God  for  worship  of  mine.  How  can 
I  trust  such  a  God  ?  '  There  is  a  tale  of  which  only  the 
form  is  childish  :  '  I  will  pray  to  Him  all  this  week  for 
an  engine,  and  if  He  don't  give  it  me  I  shall  worship 
idols.' 

We  may  here  impale  in  passing  two  complementary 
fallacies  about  love.  First,  that  it  is  enjoyment,  and  not 
service  and  sacrifice.  This  was  Bossuet's  vulgar  and 
popular  error  in  his  conflict  with  Fenelon.  And,  second, 
that  love,  when  it  becomes  holy  love,  has  no  duties  or 
sacrifices  to  itself.  The  correction  of  these  two  errors  is 
the  gi'eat  function  of  Christian  history,  the  moralisation 
of  love.  Truly,  God  alone  knows  the  love  of  God,  and 
how  entirely  we  owe  everything  to  it.  But  it  is  some- 
thing else  than  human  affection  raised  to  infinity. 

It  is  indeed  hard  to  discuss  such  a  frame  of  mind  as  I 
have  described  when  it  meets  us  in  people  who  camiot 
see  for  tears,  cannot  think  for  heartbreak,  and  cannot 
believe  for  shock — their  best  and  dearest  hopes,  private  or 
public,  being  in  ruins  at  their  feet.  There  seems  no  God 
in  a  black  world.  '  If  Thou  hadst  been  here,  my  son,  my 
husband  had  not  died.' 

The  insistence  on  a  heroic  and  theocentric  faith  may  seem 
but  heartless  to  those  who  are  helpless  in  the  last  distress. 


Li  EXPECTATIONS  OF  POPULAR  RELIGION  21 

Let  this  then  be  said  about  an  anthropocentric  Christianity. 
It  has  its  precious  place  and  great  rights.  It  is  the  first 
stage  of  sainthood.  Christ,  indeed,  means  '  God  for  us,' 
and  our  need,  our  despair,  is  His  opportunity  ;  but  in 
such  a  way  that  He  converts  our  blessings  into  His  praise, 
and  His  Spirit  does  not  return  to  Him  void.  That  is  to 
say,  whereas  we  begin  with  '  God  for  us '  by  His  grace, 
we  end  with  '  We  for  God  '  by  our  faith.  He  so  answers 
our  prayer  that  we  come  to  ask  Him  nothing,  and  we  are 
lifted  in  self-oblivion  to  adore.  His  supreme  value  to  us  is 
to  lift  us  to  reaHse  His  loving  right  to  us.  He  so  hears  our 
'  Lord,  do  my  will,'  that  we  close  with  '  Thy  will  be  done,' 
in  a  mood  which  is  co-operant  much  more  than  resigned. 
And,  after  all,  if  we  seek  Him  for  His  blessing  to  us,  that 
is  still  incipiently  theocentric  ;  for  it  is  His  will,  and  not 
our  dream,  that  He  should  be  thus  sought. 

But  another  thing.  It  may  be  wrong  to  transfer  the 
craving  frame  of  mind  directly  to  the  larger  egoisms, 
social  or  patriotic.  In  our  personal  religion  we  begin 
with  God  for  us.  God,  by  His  own  will,  is  for  our  soul 
first  its  redeemer,  then  its  sanctifier  into  self-forgetfulness. 
He  so  saves  us  from  ourselves  that  some  have  risen  to  say 
they  were  willing  to  be  lost  for  His  glory.  But  it  may  not 
follow  that  such  anthropocentrism  is  His  providential  way 
for  the  larger  unities,  the  group-unities  whose  personahty 
is  incomplete.  The  nations  are  from  the  first  for  God  and 
His  Kingdom  more  than  He  for  them.  No  nation  is  an 
end  in  itself  as  a  soul  is.  The  idea  of  a  group-personahty 
is  a  great  and  fertile  one,  but  it  can  hardly  be  allowed 
to  go  as  far  as  that.  It  befits  the  Church  better  than  the 
nation,  since  the  Church  has  what  no  nation  has — a  per- 
sonal Holy  Spirit  at  its  core  for  the  permanent  source  of 
all  its  life  and  change.  But  we  cannot  offhand  transfer 
to  a  people  the  features  or  the  destinies  of  the  individual 
soul.  We  have  not,  for  instance,  learned  to  think  of 
nationality  as  immortal  in  the  way  a  soul  is  immortal. 


22  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

Nor  can  we  think  of  it  as  communing  with  God  like  either 
the  soul  or  the  Church.  It  is  not  easy  to  think  that  God 
loves  the  perishable  nation  in  the  sense  in  which  He  loves 
either  the  souls  that  compose  it  or  the  human  race  it  is 
there  to  bless.  Nor  is  the  nation  entitled  to  the  absolute 
devotion  of  any  soul,  since  in  its  history  necessity  plays,  if 
not  a  greater  part  than  freedom,  yet  a  part  too  great  for 
the  allegiance  of  a  soul,  where  freedom  takes  the  lead. 
Patriotism  is  not  religion.  God  does  not  love  one  nation 
at  the  cost  of  the  rest.  In  His  free  grace  He  is  for  nations 
only  as  they  are  for  Him,  though  He  is  there  for  our  souls 
before  we  are  for  Him,  and  as  the  only  means  of  making 
us  for  Him.  They  are  ends  in  themselves  as  nations 
are  not.  Nations  are  too  impersonal  to  be  the  objects 
of  His  grace  as  souls  are.  They  may  be  His  instruments 
more  than  His  servants,  and  both  more  than  His  friends. 
They  are  there  for  Him  more  than  He  for  them.  A 
theodicy  of  history  must  take  this  into  account,  and  must 
not  treat  national  ambitions  as  sympathetically  as  those 
egoist  desires  which  are  sound  enough  for  private  religion 
in  its  beginning.  We  have,  as  nations,  the  right  to  expect 
the  help  of  God  not  as  we  have  a  pride  of  place,  but  only 
as  we  may  be  of  more  use  than  our  foes  to  the  Kingdom 
of  God  in  the  world,  and  not  to  mere  civilisation.  In 
the  diplomacy  of  war  it  might  be  an  error,  stupid  and 
grave,  perhaps  fatal,  that  one  nation  should  leave  another 
out  of  account.  But  it  would  be  more  dense  and  disastrous 
still  for  both  to  leave  out  of  account  the  Kingdom  of 
God,  and  in  the  policy  of  States  to  ignore  entirely  the 
principle  of  the  Church. 

World  calamity  bears  home  to  us  the  light  way  in 
which,  through  a  long  peace  and  insulation,  we  were 
coming  to  take  the  problem  of  the  world,  and  especially 
its  moral  problem.  '  We  do  not  now  bother  about  sin ' 
was   said   with   some   satisfaction.     The    preachei^   pro- 


I.]  EXPECTATIONS  OF  POPULAR  RELIGION  23 

tested  in  vain  against  that  terrible  statement — those  of 
them  that  had  not  lost  their  Gospel  in  their  culture. 
But  they  were  damned  with  the  charge  of  theology.  And 
now  God  enters  the  pulpit,  and  preaches  in  His  own  way 
by  deeds.  And  His  sermons  are  long  and  taxing,  and  they 
spoil  the  dinner.  Clearly  God's  problem  with  the  world 
is  much  more  serious  than  we  dreamed.  We  are  having  a 
revelation  of  the  awful  and  desperate  nature  of  evil.  The 
task  which  the  Cross  has  to  meet  is  something  much  greater 
than  a  pacific,  domestic,  fraternal  t3rpe  of  rehgion  allows 
us  to  face.  Disaster  should  end  dainty  and  dreamy 
religion,  and  give  some  rest  to  the  winsome  Christ  and 
the  wooing  note.  It  should  discourage  a  reHgion  more 
romantic  than  classic,  which  sacrifices  the  institutional 
truth  of  faith  entirely  to  its  intimate  mood,  a  reUgion 
but  bland  and  brotherly,  in  which  the  ethical  note  of 
justification  is  smothered  in  a  spurious  type  of  recon- 
ciliation. Let  us  hope  that  all  will  result  in  the  dis- 
covery of  a  holier  mercy,  through  judgment  braced,  and 
wise  by  more  than  pity — ^by  the  conquest  of  the  last 
despair.  It  is  a  much  wickeder  world  than  our  good 
nature  had  come  to  imagine,  or  our  prompt  piety  to 
fathom.  We  see  more  of  the  world  Christ  saw.  It  calls 
for  a  vaster  salvation  and  a  diviner  Christ  than  we  were 
sinking  to  believe.  And  it  must  cast  us  back  on  re- 
sources in  that  Saviour  which  the  mental  levity  of  com- 
fortable reUgion,  lying  back  for  a  warm  bath  in  its  pew, 
was  coming  to  stigmatise  as  gratuitous  theology.  The 
salvation  of  the  world  is  a  much  greater  agony  and  victory 
than  any  but  the  very  elite  of  the  Church's  faith  had 
seen,  and  it  calls  for  more  than  a  Cross  merely  kind  and 
sacrificial,  or  a  Grospel  but  blithe  and  wise.  The  object 
of  God  in  His  Gospel  is  something  more  than  to  multiply 
cases  of  moral  excellence  in  an  atmosphere  of  spiritual 
culture  ;  it  is  to  produce  a  realm  of  justifying,  glorifying 
faith.     That  is  man's  chief  end — such  a  faith  working 


24  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [cH. 

out  into  a  kingdom  of  love — God  justifying  man,  and 
man  justifying  God.  And  both  because  of  God's  justi- 
fication of  Himself  and  His  holy  way  in  the  Grace  and 
Cross  of  Jesus  Christ. 

That  would  therefore  be  a  blessing  from  the  heart  of 
curse,  which  recalled  us  to  the  old  sense,  which  many  a 
bad  theology  can  yet  rouse,  of  the  superhuman  great- 
ness and  superhistoric  deity  of  the  Saviour  of  such  a 
world.  It  is  a  sense  much  lost  amid  all  the  fresh  interest 
with  which  modem  scholarship  has  invested  His  historic 
life,  and  the  new  depth  it  has  found  in  His  words.  The 
new  historic  greatness  of  Christ  may  engross  us  to  the 
neglect  of  His  eternal  glory.  And  there  are  moments 
when,  in  sj^mpathy  with  modern  ideas  and  hopes,  we 
imderstand  the  deniers  of  any  salvation  but  too  well. 
We  ask  ourselves  incredulously — some  who  thought  their 
faith  on  firm  foundations  ask — whether,  as  such  wicked- 
ness seems  impossible  to  one  person,  however  Satanic,  the 
grasp  and  control  of  it,  to  say  nothing  of  its  cure,  is  not 
also  beyond  the  personality  of  a  Saviour.  But  these  are 
only  moments.  The  worst  calamity  of  all  is  calamity 
falling  on  a  godless  world.  To  that  we  need  not  come. 
In  the  seeming  failure  of  a  God  of  order  we  are  cast 
upon  a  God  of  crisis,  who  is  God  most  chiefly  in  the 
chief  tragedy  of  things,  and  from  the  nettle  of  perdition 
plucks  the  flower  of  salvation.  The  victory  in  Christ's 
Cross  is  greater  than  that  in  any  possible  war.  WTien 
we  groan  under  the  dreadful  burden  the  world  bears, 
and  when,  at  the  end  of  our  thought,  in  despair  of 
all  else,  we  are  cast  upon  hourly  prayer  to  the  Holy 
One  whose  love  has  borne  the  burden  of  a  perverse  and 
warring  world  since  the  beginning,  and  who  is  '  crucified 
to  its  end,'  we  feel  that  calamities  so  Awiul  can  be  in 
the  hands  of  no  mere  man,  nor  ■within  the  compass  of  a 
human  soul.     If  Christ  were  but  a  choice  soul  and  no  more. 


I.]  EXPECTATIONS  OP  POPULAR  RELIGION  25 

not  the  elect  Son,  we  should  certainly  have  to  pass  Him 
by  to  reach  a  Saviour  of  the  world    adequate  for  the 
human  perdition  now  revealed  as  by  a  last  trump.     But 
that  would  be  an  end  of  Christian  faith.     For  to  that 
faith  God  in  Christ  has  taken  the  responsibility  for  the 
destiny  of  a  world  whose  evil  to  His  eye  is  worse  than 
wars  can  reveal  to  ours,  or  all  our  horror  gauge.     He 
has  spoken,   has  come,   has  acted,   has  overcome.     The 
modern  world  lives  in  that  victory,  however  veiled.     We 
begin  and  end  with  a   faith,   not  in  Jesus  simply  but  in 
His  world  work,  not  simply  in  His  person  but  in  His  per- 
son's office,  in  Him  as  God's  Son  and  Christ  and  Redeemer, 
for  good  and  all,  the  Conqueror  and  Saviour  of  a  world 
worse  even  than  we  now  see,  the  slow  Regenerator  of 
the  administration  of  his  purchased  property.     We  begin 
with  the  faith  in  which  our  own  soul  calls  Him  its  Saviour 
from  what  seems  an  infinite  and  hopeless  evil.     He  de- 
livers us  from  a  sin  whose  guilt  lies  on  our  small  soul 
with  a  pressure  from  the  reservoir  of  all  the  high  wicked- 
ness of  the  world.     It  is  not  from  our  moral  lapses  nor 
from   our  individual  taint    that    we   are   deHvered,   but 
from  world  sin,  sin  in  dominion,  sin  sohdary  if  not  here- 
ditary, yea,  from  sin  which  integrates  us  into  a  Satanic 
Kingdom.     An   event  Hke  the  war  at  least  aids   God's 
purpose  in  this,  that  it  shocks  and  rouses  us  into  some 
due  sense  of  what  evil  is,  and  what  a  Saviour's  task  with 
it  is.     We  need  not  talk  of  *  total  corruption,'  but  it  is 
the  maKgn  and  organised  evil  of  a  whole  intricate  and 
infected  world  that  has  got  hold  of  us  in  various  degrees, 
an  evil  from  which  no  culture  can  free  us,  to  which  the 
apparatus  of  civilisation  itself,  when  captured,  may  but 
give  the  more  power  and  scope.     The  present  state  of 
things  is  a  revelation  (such  as  never  came  home  to  the 
genial  pieties  of  peace)   of  this  superhuman  wickedness 
of  the  world,  which  prophets  from  time  to  time  declared 
and  doomed,  only  to  be  called  the  Jeremiahs  of  the  hour, 


26  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [CH. 

its  trouble-fetes,  and  the  maligners  of  human  nature  in 
the  interest  of  a  dead  and  dismal  theology. 

It  is  impossible  that  the  whole  dimensions  and  heinous- 
ness  of  wickedness,  the  abysmal  perdition  of  humanity, 
should  be  grasped  by  any  created  soul.  Only  the  abso- 
lutely holy  can  measure  sin  or  judge  it.  No  individual 
man  has  mind  enough  to  grasp  the  wickedness  of  a  nation, 
nor  heart  enough  to  bewail  it — to  say  nothing  of  morals 
enough  to  master  it.  None  but  Christ  gauged  the  sin  of 
Israel.  And  what  are  we  to  say  of  the  sin  of  the  whole 
race  ?  No  single  soul  of  us  escapes  from  the  evil  far  enough 
to  gauge  it,  to  judge  it,  and  therefore  to  destroy  it.  None 
could  remain  at  the  same  time  so  intimate  in  our  conscience 
as  to  bear  it.  No  godliest  saint,  promoted  for  his  spiritual 
purity  and  heroism  to  the  highest  place  a  creature  could 
win — ^no  such  Adoptionist  Messiah  could  cope  with  the 
devilry  revealed  in  the  cynical  inversion  of  a  whole 
nation's  conscience,  and  the  moral  convulsion  of  a  world 
with  no  resource  but  war.  He  could  not  deliver  a  single 
soul  from  the  racial  evil  which  infects  it.  And,  therefore, 
we  are  driven  back  to  before  the  foundation  of  the  world — 
to  a  Redeemer  who  was  there,  who  is  deeper  and  older 
than  His  human  nature,  whose  Redemption  of  the  world 
is  only  possible  because  of  His  part  in  its  creation,  who 
took  the  responsibility  of  creating  because  He  knew 
He  possessed  the  power  to  redeem  and  retrieve  whatever 
creation  might  come  to.  No  created  being  could  save  the 
creation,  none  who  only  became  a  king  because  he  nobly 
and  mightily  died,  but  One  alone  who  died  so  mightily 
and  finally  for  the  world  because  He  was  its  holy  King. 
None  but  a  supramundane  Christ  can  cope  with  such 
evil  as  comes  home  to  us  now.  And  what  we  now  realise 
of  evil  is  but  a  fraction  of  what  the  holy  eye  has  seen,  His 
heart  borne,  and  His  redemption  engaged  since  history 
began. 

In  the  New  Testament  we  can  see  how  the  belief  in  such 


L]  EXPECTATIONS  OF  POPULAR  RELIGION  27 

a  Saviour  was  forced  on  Christian  experience.  We  can 
trace  the  process  by  which  the  Christ  who  was  reaHsed  as 
the  soul's  Saviour  was  placed  by  sacred  thought  for  ever  by 
the  Father's  side  at  the  very  creation  of  the  world.  Apostolic 
faith  in  its  thought  carried  back  the  implicates  of  its  vast 
experience  of  a  final  salvation.  The  organ  of  the  second 
and  greater  creation  which  we  do  know  must  have  been  the 
organ  of  the  first  which  we  do  not — unless  we  are  to 
believe  that  between  Nature  and  Grace  there  was  not  a 
miraculous  action  but  an  impassable  gulf.  And  we  can 
mark  the  same  process,  trend,  and  venture  of  holy  thought 
asserting  itself  in  the  genius  of  all  the  great  theologies 
(however  criticisable  their  precise  form)  which  have 
expounded  the  Catholic  Church's  consciousness  of  its 
salvation.  The  whole  celestial  greatness  and  glory 
assigned  by  them  to  a  Saviour  who  left  heaven  with  the 
free  purpose  of  salvation  ;  all  the  majesty  and  radiance 
of  conception  in  which  the  mediaeval  thinker  and  artist 
set  forth  His  splendour  there ;  the  glorious  pictured 
economy  of  a  heavenly  world  which  creation  but  re- 
flects— it  was  all  but  the  expansion,  in  a  continuity  back- 
wards, of  that  same  deepest  principle  and  surest  sense 
of  the  soul's  Redemption  from  a  world's  evil  which  cast 
the  mind  also  forward  into  visions  of  an  Eternal  City  of 
Grod,  and  an  ineffable  Jerusalem  descending  from  above. 
What  I  try  to  say  is  this,  that  the  human  collapse,  whose 
deadly  greatness  is  shoTvn  anew  to-day  in  the  fall  of  the 
Lucifer  of  nations,  in  proportion  as  its  madness  wrecks 
humanitarian  dreams  and  the  modem  apotheosis  of  man, 
is  calculated  to  wake  anew  in  the  Church  the  sense,  nay 
the  faith,  which  long  ago  grew  up  out  of  Europe's  con- 
vulsions and  perditions  in  an  empire's  fall — the  faith  of 
the  necessary  deity  and  victorious  majesty  of  any  one 
who  undertook  to  be  the  Saviour  of  such  a  world,  and 
who  is  realised  as  the  Saviour  by  the  soul  enmeshed  in  it, 
so  realised  by  a  whole  Church  of  such  souls.  How  we  should 


28  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

formally  conceive  of  such  deity  and  majesty  is  a  further 
question.     But  an  '  eternal  sin  '  means  an  eternal  Saviour. 

Still  another  thing  comes  home  from  world  disaster. 
I  hinted  it  a  little  ago.  The  real  root  of  the  calamity 
spreads  through  the  whole  spiritual  and  moral  fabric  of 
a  natural  Humanity  too  successful  to  owe  itself  to  any 
but  itself.  It  is  the  doom  of  an  age,  of  an  egoist  and 
competitive  age,  both  in  the  Old  World  and  in  the  New, 
whose  profits  are  beyond  all  proportion  to  its  outlaj^ 
and  whose  wealth  is  far  more  than  it  can  guide.  It  can 
rule  industry  but  not  success.  And,  if  the  curse  is  in 
civilisation  itself,  it  is  in  such  religion  as  it  has.  The 
conditions  of  collapse  are  conditions  that  belong  to  modern 
progress,  through  its  practical  neglect  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God,  nay,  its  practical  antagonism  to  it.  For  not  to 
own  its  supremacy  is  to  deny  its  existence  or  its  right. 
And  upon  that  civilisation  does  judgment  pass.  Mili- 
tarism is  but  competition  writ  large  and  red.  In  business 
competition  has  not  rent  society  because  of  the  immense 
qualifications  and  mitigations  it  has  from  social,  moral, 
and  religious  life.  In  war  these  are  thrown  to  the  winds. 
But  as  matter  of  fact  the  root  of  the  war  has  been  even 
more  commercial  than  military.  ^  Is  the  principle  of  the  war 
very  different  from  that  of  a  general  strike,  which  would 
bring  society  to  its  knees  by  sheer  impatient  force,  and 
which  so  many  avoid  only  as  impolitic  and  not  as  immoral  ? 
The  love  of  man  cannot  stand  up  long,  whether  in  capital 
or  labour,  without  the  love  of  God  ^vith  its  moral  principle 
and  quality  ;  and  pity  dries  up  -v^dthout  His  holy  mercy. 
An  international  authority  vanishes  with  the  faith  of  that 
Kingdom  of  God  which  speculations  about  the  future  so 
steadily  avoid.  The  judgment  descends  on  a  whole  pro- 
gressive   world,    whose    egoist    civilisation    had    replaced 

1  See  the  fascinating  book  by  Professor  Millioud  of  Lausanne,  The  Ruling 
Caste  and  Frenzied  Trade  in  Germanii  (Constable). 


I.]  EXPECTATIONS  OF  POPULAR  RELIGION  29 

that  Kingdom,  and  found  the  Church  to  be  but  a  by- 
product of  national  reHgion,  or  but  another  of  the  empires, 
with  no  international  voice.  Before  the  half-century  of 
German  preparation  there  were  warnings  given  by  moral 
seers  who  were  in  a  position  to  measure  the  state  of 
European  ethic,  religion,  and  poHtics,  and  who  saw 
nothing  in  front  but  the  awful  debacle  that  has  now  come. 
In  the  Appendix  to  this  chapter  I  refer  to  the  portentous 
conclusions  appended  to  Bunsen's  God  in  History  (1860) — 
warnings  repeated,  amplified,  and  varied  to  no  purpose 
by  many  men  of  genius  and  preachers  of  faith,  both 
Cathohc  and  Protestant,  from  then  till  now.  There  has 
been  no  such  drain  on  a  civihsation  since  the  Roman 
Empire  fell  to  the  barbarians  of  the  North.  Out  of  that 
flux  it  was  the  Church  of  a  great,  commanding,  and  super- 
national  Gospel  that  came  with  most  gain  and  good.  Is 
the  Church  to-day  equal  to  the  situation  of  to-day  ?  In 
the  collapse  of  the  ancient  civilisation,  it  was  the  Church 
that  saved  the  world  for  another.  Upon  the  sack  of 
Rome,  I  have  mentioned,  Augustine  wrote  his  City  of 
God,  and  opened  a  new  era  which  he  has  not  yet  ceased 
to  mould.  But  in  the  collapse  of  that  new  civihsation 
to-day,  what  is  to  save  us  ?  Can  the  Church  in  its  rent 
condition  do  it  again  ?  TOiat  is  the  International  which  is 
to  save  Humanity  from  egoist  nationalism  ?  Can  the 
statesmen  with  their  devices  for  future  peace  ?  Are  these 
not  too  much  the  organisation  of  our  fear  ?  Can  Rome  ? 
Not  with  her  curialism,  fumbling  at  the  moral  situation, 
and  '  the  successor  of  Peter  even  in  his  betrayal '  ?  Can 
the  national  churches  ?  The  German  seems  sohd  for 
the  Belgian  crime  and  the  Lusitania  '  f rightfulness.'  Can 
our  free  Churches  ?  They  do  not  seem  to  measure  the 
problem.  Byzantinised,  Chalcedonised,  reformed,  rational- 
ised, humanised,  divided,  everything  but  remoralised  by 
a  regeneration,  if  not  an  inversion,  of  values,  is  the 
Church  evangelised  enough  still  to  make  men  feel  that 


30  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

its  gospel  of  judgment  and  salvation  to  the  conscience  is, 
for  men  and  nations,  the  moral  secret,  the  dominant 
power,  the  judging  principle,  the  one  antiseptic,  the 
renewing  energy  deepest  in  history  ?  Can  it  save  civilisa- 
tion even  if  by  love's  fire  ?  Can  it  replace  in  command  a 
righteous  because  a  holy  God  ?  In  a  world  orgy  of  brute 
power,  has  it  everything  but  moral  weight  on  a  world 
scale  ?  Do  not  tell  me  of  the  good  it  is  doing  among 
the  poor.  \Vhere  should  we  be  without  that  ?  But  to 
talk  like  that  is  to  parley  with  the  situation,  and  to  miss 
the  whole  issue.  Was  the  Church's  Gospel  God's  last  word 
and  work  for  the  world  ?  It  has  not  won  the  world's 
heart ;  has  it  lost  the  world's  conscience  ?  Has  it  the 
word  and  the  heart  to  beard  kings  and  quell  spiritual 
wickedness  in  high  places  ?     Let  the  German  Church  say. 

But  let  us  return  to  the  merits  of  their  case  for  whom 
such  catastrophes  impugn  a  Providence  and  destroy  a 
faith.  Tliis  result,  I  was  suggesting,  but  brings  to  light 
a  fatal  fallacy  in  what  they  have  been  led  to  expect  by 
the  popular  type  of  religion.  The  whole  habit  of  leisurely 
apologetic  has  had  in  view  an  evil  too  remote,  passion- 
less, and  unrealised,  and  a  God  who,  if  He  was  not 
kindness  to  man,  was  no  God  for  him.  The  young 
mind  has  been  shaped  in  religion  by  influences  youthful 
for  a  grave  situation,  too  feminine  for  a  history  of  men, 
and  too  motherly  to  reveal  the  Father-King.  Truly 
we  cannot  exaggerate  the  love  of  God,  if  we  will  take 
pains  to  first  understand  it.  But  we  have  been  taught 
to  believe  only  in  a  beneficent  and  not  in  a  sovereign 
God,  in  a  tender  God  in  no  sense  judge,  in  an  attractive 
God,  more  kindly  than  holy,  more  lovely  than  good — the 
God  of  the  children,  or  of  the  evangelist,  or  of  the  honour- 
able, successful  man  with  the  delightful  home,  the  agree- 
able circle,  and  the  generous  hand — a  God  whose  purpose 
of  love  became  incredible  unless  it  was  pursued  by  winsome 


I.]  EXPECTATIONS  OF  POPULAR  RELIGION  31 

ways,  and  published  in  fine  and  tender  discourse.  The 
Saviour  must  wear  soft  raiment.  If  ever  He  was  rough, 
the  less  a  Saviour  He.  If  He  seem  austere,  that,  it  is 
said,  is  through  a  religion  that  buries  its  own  talent  and 
takes  to  monkish  interpretation  ;  if  He  is  exacting,  it 
is  due  to  callous  theologians  without  the  platform  note 
and  the  '  great  human  heart.'  And,  if  His  way  with 
civilisation  is  judgment,  if  it  is  not  cloudless  sympathy 
and  benediction,  it  ceases  to  be  of  grace.  Such  a  habit 
of  mind,  now  that  the  lid  is  off  hell,  is  suddenly  struck 
from  its  only  perch,  feels  taken  in,  and  asks  if  such  a 
world  as  we  see  can  be  the  means  to  a  loving  end,  if  it  could 
ever  be  made  to  contribute  to  a  Divine  Kingdom.  It  has 
always  been  taught  to  conceive  of  that  Kingdom  but  as 
the  organisation  of  men  in  love  more  thorough  than 
their  present  organisation  in  mutual  fear  and  hate.  It 
has  not  learned  to  think  of  it  as  the  reign  of  a  God  whose 
love  is  holy  at  any  price.  It  fears  anarchy  more  than 
it  hallows  God.  It  is  not  used  to  first-class  crisis.  And 
in  its  shock  it  can  find  no  theodicy  in  the  course  of 
history,  no  conduct  of  things  by  God  worthy  of  God — 
worthy  of  its  kind  of  God,  whose  Cross  was  but  a  kindly 
boon  to  crippled  men,  and  not  chiefly  an  honour  done 
to  the  Holy  Name,  and  the  foundation  of  the  Holy  Realm. 
They  have  gone  to  the  wrong  source.  Where  shall 
we  get  the  idea  of  what  is  worthy  of  God  ?  There  can 
only  be  one  source  of  such  knowledge.  It  is  the  final 
account  God  gives  of  Himself.  It  is  no  expectation  of 
ours,  no  presumption  in  us  of  what  a  godlike  God  would 
do,  no  imagination  of  a  God  projected  from  our  need. 
God's  account  of  Himself,  of  His  way  with  man,  and  of 
the  purpose  He  infuses  into  history.  His  account  of  His 
will,  on  the  scale  and  depth  of  the  great  convulsive 
judgments,  is  in  Christ  and  His  Cross,  or  it  is  nowhere. 
It  is  in  the  Cross  which  so  many  are  disposed  to  treat 
as  an  incident,  or  at  most  an  object-lesson,  though  one 


32  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

falsified  by  all  the  stem  course  of  history.  The  Cross 
of  Christ,  with  its  judgment-grace,  its  tragic  love,  its 
grievous  glory,  its  severe  salvation,  and  its  '  finished 
work,'  is  God's  only  self-justification  in  such  a  world. 
But  is  it  not  a  salvation  full  and  free  ?  Surely.  Full 
of  the  passion  which  sets  the  soul  free  for  Himself. 
Free  ?  It  was  of  His  own  will.  Hard  ?  Yes, 
but  hardest  of  aU  for  Him.  He  took  on  Himself 
there  more  than  He  ever  inflicts  ;  and  His  infliction 
from  us  there  He  turns  into  His  redemption.  The  Cross 
meant  more  change  in  God  than  in  man.  It  was  His 
own  Act  of  changing  judgment  into  mercy,  His  own 
miracle.  And  its  first  concern  was  His  holy  love,  not 
ours.  Real  and  thorough  religion  is  theocentric  more 
than  anthropocentric.  Thus,  you  see,  the  revision  of  our 
expectations  involves  the  revision  of  our  Creed.  It  is 
impossible  even  to  discuss  the  theodicy  all  pine  for 
without  the  theology  so  many  deride.  I  shall  venture  to 
suggest  that  a  call  has  come  to  the  Church  to  set  its  own 
house  in  order,  and  show  some  deeper  sense  of  the  real 
moral  problem — the  problem  within  God,  the  problem 
of  judgment  as  atonement — ere  it  venture  to  adjust  to 
the  conscience  the  damaged  moral  order  of  the  world. 
It  is  invited  by  events  to  discard  light  solutions,  easy 
beliefs,  and  endings  merely  happy  ;  now  to  rise  above  its 
cowardly  dread  of  depth  on  the  ground  that  it  is  obscure ; 
to  win  from  God's  answer  in  Christ  at  least  some  pro- 
founder  sense  of  the  world  problem  and  some  higher 
sense  of  the  one  and  eternal  moraHty  ;  to  put  down  into 
their  proper  place  the  small  empirics  and  the  mild 
mystics  who  have  never  descended  into  hell  and  therefore 
do  not  know  the  price  of  heaven,  who  never  tasted 
damnation  and  therefore  knew  not  the  authentic  taste  of 
grace.  Unfortunately,  the  Church's  treatment  of  her 
truth  has  allowed  it  to  come  to  this,  that  when  we  use 
the  only  language  that  fits  the  moral  case  of  mankind. 


I.]  EXPECTATIONS  OF  POPULAR  RELIGION  33 

the  language  of  the  New  Te^ament,  we  are  supposed 
by  very  many  who  should  know  better  to  be  discussing 
theses  and  holding  a  brief  for  some  system  of  theology, 
instead  of  handling  the  last  moral  powers  of  heaven  and 
earth,  and  setting  out  the  final  relations  of  Grod's  con- 
science and  man's. 

A  Christian  optimism  has  grown  up  which  had  begun 
(hke  the  social  passion  for  brotherhood  without  righteous- 
ness, or  with  a  righteousness  which  was  only  fraternity) 
to  dream  of  a  speedy  unity  of  the  Churches  without  a 
prime  regard  to  their  belief.  Especially  was  it  indifferent 
to  any  grasp  of  reconciliation  deep  and  drastic  enough  to 
fit  the  present  pandemonium  ;  which  is  man's  last  master- 
piece in  the  way  of  unity,  progress,  or  a  sjTnpathetic 
religion.  From  the  German  Church,  in  particular,  there 
comes  a  blow  fatal  to  any  such  speedy  hope.  But  the 
pagan  Byzantinism  of  the  German  Church  is  not  the 
only  factor  in  the  unhappy  situation.  The  subjectivism, 
descending  to  sentiment,  to  which,  in  many  quarters. 
Protestantism  generally  has  sunk,  its  neglect  of  objective 
fact,  truth,  righteousness,  and  reality,  has  much  to  do 
with  the  total  situation  and  the  bewilderment  it  creates. 
A  world  convulsion  is  bound  to  shatter  any  faith  not  / 
founded  on  a  world  righteousness  for  ever  secured. 

We  have  been  taught,  for  instance,  to  trust  sacrifice 
as  a  divine  thing  in  itself,  latent  in  humanity,  with  the 
Cross  as  no  more  than  its  superlative.  We  have  been 
encouraged  to  measure  our  religion  by  the  sacrifice  we 
make  instead  of  the  sacrifice  we  trust,  by  the  love  we 
feel  instead  of  the  love  we  love.  And  now  we  are  com- 
pelled to  see  the  wreck  of  such  a  creed,  as  we  mark  the 
sacrifice  of  German  faith  to  German  nationalism,  and 
to  deplore  the  sacrifice  of  German  lives  and  loves  to  a 
German  state  with  morals  optional.  We  are  shocked 
into  the  perception  that  even  a  principle  like  sacrifice 

c 


34  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

may  become  '  procuress  to  the  Lords  of  Hell.'  For  our 
humanist  optimism,  the  blow  is  comparable  to  that  given 
to  philosophic  optimism  by  the  earthquake  of  Lisbon 
in  1755.  That  event  startled  people  out  of  the  com- 
fortable view  that  the  general  course  of  the  world  was 
an  apparatus  for  the  harmonious  completion  of  a  rational 
creation  in  man  as  the  intelligent  summit  of  nature. 
It  drove  them  to  think  in  terms  of  crisis  (that  is,  of 
Gospel)  rather  than  of  process  (that  is,  of  law)  :  and 
it  led  them  to  view  the  movement  of  things  as  the  sphere 
for  the  development  of  moral  personaUty  through  its 
collision  with  nature  rather  than  its  harmony — a  collision 
rising,  as  in  the  Cross,  to  tragedy.  The  anomalous  thing 
then  was  not  cosmic  defects  but  blights  upon  the  soul's 
ideals  and  aspirations,  or  fates  that  impede  personal 
development,  and  even  make  it  practically  impossible. 
We  may  now  be  startled  into  a  stage  of  beHef  higher  still. 
Are  we  now  being  taught  to  see  that  the  world  of  nature 
and  of  man  is  there  for  something  else  than  progress — 
for  eternity  ;  for  more  than  man's  purposes  and  glories, 
even  for  more  than  our  moral  development  as  persons  ? 
Is  there  not  something  greater  than  personality — the 
Redemption  by  which  alone  such  as  we  may  become 
persons  ?  Are  we  meant  to  learn  that  life  is  there  for 
the  production  of  a  personaHty  saved  by  unique  crisis 
rather  than  developed  by  steady  culture,  one  holy  in 
faith  rather  than  moral  in  self-achievement  ?  The 
anomalous  thing  is  then  not  the  outer  tragedy  of  fate 
but  the  inner  tragedy  of  guilt,  and  man's  chief  end  is  to 
be  forgiven  and  redeemed.  We  may  be  taught  that,  if 
we  are  to  be  holy  at  all,  we  can  be  holy  in  faith  only, 
and  in  faith  reared  on  a  tragedy  rather  than  a  truce.  For, 
80  far  as  we  see,  the  holier  the  sold  is,  the  more  it  has 
against  it ;  and  the  saints,  the  more  they  are  set  on  the 
Kingdom  of  Grod,  are  of  all  men  most  miserable  if  they 
look  primarily  to  the  moral  amelioration  of  the  world. 


I.]  EXPECTATIONS  OF  POPULAR  RELIGION  35 

The  Kingdom  of  God  in  the  world  means  much  more 
than  that.  Are  we  being  driven  to  ask  whether  the  spirit 
of  hoHness  is  not  the  recognition  that  man's  progress 
is  not  the  supreme  goal  of  God's  action  in  the  world,  and 
to  question  whether  he  is  even  its  pivot  ?  We  are  set 
to  inquire  on  what  principle  we  could  secure,  not  the 
continuity  of  evolution,  but  the  supremacy  of  God's 
loving  glory,  and  how  we  are  to  avoid  a  mere  sanctified 
Eudemonism  and  the  passion  for  having  a  good  time  in 
a  decent  way.  We  are  bidden  to  recognise  that  God's 
demand  on  man  takes  the  lead  of  man's  demand  on  God. 
And  both  are  overruled  by  God's  demand  on  God,  God's 
meeting  His  own  demand.  And  we  learn  unwillingly  that 
only  God's  justification  of  man  gives  the  secret  of  man's 
justification  of  God.  The  justification  at  the  root  of  all 
other  is  God's  self-justification.  In  a  word,  there  is  but 
one  theodicy,  and  it  is  the  evangeHcal.  For  the  Gospel  has 
the  only  universal  and  eternal  ethic  in  its  heart,  the  true, 
real,  and  final  moral  relation  of  God  and  man. 


APPENDIX  TO  CHAPTER  I 

BuNSEN  wrote  his  God  in  History  in  1860,  and  though  half  a 
century  has  antiquated  some  parts  of  the  book,  there  are  a  few 
theses  at  its  end  which  are  striking  in  the  light  of  recent  events, 
and  which  show  the  prophetic  insight  of  this  devout  scholar  and 
man  of  the  world  : — 

'  Are  we  not  even  now  Hving  in  the  midst  of  one  of  the  great 
crises,  and  perhaps  on  the  very  eve  of  a  catastrophe  of  the  whole 
of  European  society.' 

*  As  to  Church  matters,  neither  in  doctrine  nor  in  cultus  do  the 
formulas  now  in  use  correspond  to  the  rehgious  consciousness  of 
the  present  age.' 

'  The  Church  of  the  future  must  be  recognised  as  the  depository 
of  the  root  idea  of  all  worship — sacrifice.' 

'  The  poHtical  becomes  a  religious  and  ecclesiastical  crisis,  and 


36  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

the  ecclesiastical  a  political.  [The  political  and  moral  condition 
of  Germany,  of  which  he  was  chiefly  thinking,  is  the  judgment  on 
the  Byzantinism  which  has  killed  the  prophetic  voice  of  its  Church.] 
But  what  the  people  and  the  States  really  need  is  an  inward  moral 
renewal.' 

'The  people  are  demanding  from  their  Governments  greater 
liberty ;  the  Governments  are  demanding  from  the  peoples  greater 
sacrifices.  But  few  draw  the  right  conclusion  from  this  fact, 
namely,  the  existence  of  an  intrinsic  contradiction  which  cannot 
fail  to  issue  in  a  World- Crisis.' 

'The  great  Catastrophe  now  impending  will,  like  all  preceding 
catastrophes,  be  a  Day  of  Judgment  for  the  World ;  but  it  will 
be  followed  by  a  greater  and  more  glorious  unfolding  of  the  King- 
dom of  God.' 

*  According  to  the  New  Testament  the  design  and  effect  of 
the  second  coming  of  Christ  to  judgment  is  to  be  the  founding 
of  a  universal  Kingdom  of  God.  But  if  this  second  coming  is  to 
be  the  sign  of  conflict  and  judgment,  and  therefore  of  the  over- 
throw of  those  institutions  in  Church  and  State  which  are  so 
contrary  to  God,  has  not  Christ  already  returned  ?  Are  we  not 
now  living  in  His  presence  as  the  judge  who  was  to  come  ?  Which 
deceive  themselves  more — the  Jews  who  are  still  waiting  for  their 
Messiah,  or  the  Christians  (princes  and  people)  who  fafl  to  discern 
that  the  Messiah  in  whom  they  believe,  the  Spirit  of  Judgment, 
of  the  Father  and  the  Son,  has  verily  returned  to  sit  in  judgment 
on  this  thankless  and  rebellious  world  ?  ' 

'  The  restitution  of  all  things,  therefore,  the  victory  of  Christ's 
Good  upon  this  Earth,  is  the  final  Goal  of  all  History.' 

'A  time  will  come  when  an  absolute  Government  in  the  State 
will  be  held  to  be  no  less  monstrous  than  a  system  of  slavery. 
And  it  will  be  acknowledged  by  both  parties  that  Absolutism  like 
Slavery  is  an  even  greater  misfortune  for  those  who  exercise  it 
than  for  those  who  obey  it.' 

'  If  a  divine  order  of  the  world  exists  and  is  embodied  in  Jesus, 
there  must  come  a  time  when  the  levying  of  war  will  be  treated 
as  a  reUc  of  barbarism,  both  irrational  and  immoral ;  and  any 
incitement  thereto  will  be  regarded  as  a  common  crime  against 
all' 


1.1  EXPECTATIONS  OF  POPULAR  RELIGION  37 

'  What  fools  and  knaves  they  must  be  who  beheve  that  by  any 
arts  they  can  stave  off  the  coming  day  of  retribution.' 

Progress,  Bunsen  would  tell  us,  is  measured  by  Eternity.  That 
is  the  real  standard  of  -what  is  progress  or  not.  Belief  in  it  is  a 
faith  and  not  an  induction.  All  rests  on  a  great  central  decision 
as  to  human  destiny,  a  crucial  act  and  last  judgment  of  God,  which 
took  place  in  Chiist.  You  cannot  trace  a  providence  inductively, 
nor  scientifically  prove  it.  Providence  cannot  be  proved  from  the 
course  of  history,  only  trusted  from  the  positive  revelation  at 
certain  crises,  and  at  one  centrally. 


THE  JUSTIFICATION  OE  GOD  [oh. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  PROBLEMS:     REVELATION   AND  TELEOLOGY 

The  radical  questions  of  a  belief  are  forced  upon  us  anew 
by  each  crisis  of  the  world.  And  the  first  task  of  the 
Church,  before  it  go  to  work  on  the  situation  that  a  crisis 
leaves  behind,  is  to  secure  the  truth  and  certainty  for  its 
own  soul  of  its  faith  in  the  overcoming  of  evil  by  good  ; 
an  operation  which  may  mean  the  recasting  of  much 
current  and  favourite  belief.  Is  there  a  divine  govern- 
ment of  such  a  world,  a  world  whose  history  streams 
with  so  much  blood,  ruin,  and  misery  as  to  make  civilisa- 
tion seem  to  many  doubtfully  worth  while  ?  That  ques- 
tion means  for  its  answer  another.  Is  there  a  divine  goal 
of  the  world  ?  Because,  if  there  is,  God  who  secures  it 
has  the  right  to  appoint  both  its  times  and  its  means  ; 
and  a  good  government  of  the  world  is  what  helps  best 
in  our  circumstances  to  bring  us  there.  But  is  there 
such  a  goal,  and  where  do  we  find  it  ?  How  shall  we  be 
sure  of  it  ?  Are  we  to  beheve  in  it  only  if  we  can  sketch 
its  economy,  and  trace  the  convergence  of  all  lines,  what- 
ever their  crook  or  curve,  to  that  point  ?  Do  I  beheve 
that  all  is  well  with  my  soul  only  in  so  far  as  I  see  that 
all  goes  well  ?  Can  we  be  sure  that  all  is  well  with  the 
world  only  if  the  stream  of  its  history  run  through  no 
dreadful  caves,  nor  shoot  wild  cataracts,  nor  ever  sink 
to  a  trickle  in  the  sand  of  deserts  horrible  ?  Is  there, 
in  spite  of  all  appearance,  a  divine  teleology  for  the 
soul  and  for  the  race  ?     The  evolutionists  seem  driven 


n.]       PROBLEMS:  REVELATION  AND  TELEOLOGY         39 

more  and  more  to  a  teleology  of  the  world.  Is  it  a  divine 
one,  found  in  the  moral  soul  and  in  its  eternal  destiny 
for  the  image  of  God  ? 

These,  I  have  said,  are  questions  which  it  is  the  business 
of  a  practical  religion  to  answer — or,  more  exactly,  of  the 
revelation  which  is  the  heart  and  source  of  such  religion. 
A  revelation  will  be  great,  universal,  and  final  just  as 
it  does  answer  such  questions,  and  pacifies  even  the  soul 
it  does  not  yet  satisfy.  '  What  I  do,  thou  knowest  not 
now,  but  thou  shalt  know  hereafter.' 

We  may,  perhaps,  assume  that  few  in  this  country  cherish 
a  deliberate  and  reasoned  Pessimism  as  their  theology  of 
No-God.  Few  make  Chaos  king,  or  hold  disorder  to  be 
the  original  and  ideal  state  of  being,  whose  faux  pas 
produced  the  world  and  blundered  on  soul.  If  they 
were  more  logical  and  radical,  perhaps  they  would  develop 
an  explicit  creed  of  this  kind,  as  Germany  has,  who  is  now 
doing  her  missionary  best  to  restore  the  world  to  that 
first  estate.  But  they  do  not.  They  cannot  help  believ- 
ing, like  the  rest  of  us,  in  order  beneath  disorder,  within 
crisis,  and  over  crime.  And  it  is  no  order  merely  static. 
It  is  a  dynamic  order  that  science  and  experience  reveal, 
not  an  ordered  but  an  ordering  energy,  an  ordo  ordinans. 
Our  thought  is  a  mode  of  action,  our  action  is  not  a  mode 
of  thought.  Thought  is  not  thought  which  merely 
broods.  The  order  means  movement.  And  it  means 
result.  It  is  no  kaleidoscope.  It  is  movement  which  is 
not  merely  interplay,  like  that  of  wild  creatures  restless 
in  a  cage,  or  fish  sporting  in  the  sea  and  making  for  no- 
where. However  we  modify  the  idea  of  evolution,  it 
has  defined  the  movement  of  things  as  a  swelling  pro- 
cession, and  not  a  mere  interaction.  Nature  not  only 
exists,  nor  only  changes ;  it  grows.  It  certainly  grows 
in  complexity.  It  grows,  with  all  its  order,  more  hetero- 
geneous.   It   is   full    of   new   departures.    It   grows   in 


40  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [cH. 

quantity  and  variety.  But  does  it  grow  in  quality  ?  Is 
the  evolution  really  progress  ?  Is  the  complexity  more 
than  complicated,  is  it  sublimated  ?  Is  it  all  but  a  mode 
of  motion,  or  does  the  long  series  rise  to  action  ?  Is 
it  really  dramatic,  or  only  spectacular  ?  Is  it  a  play  or 
a  tableau  ?  Does  it  work  up  to  anji^hing  ?  Does  it  work 
anything  out  ?  Has  it  a  denouement,  a  reconciliation  ? 
We  used  to  delight  in  a  teleology  of  its  clockwork  parts — 
till  their  dysteleology,  their  wryness,  got  hold  of  us,  till 
life  took  the  place  of  scheme,  till  the  watch  ticking  on 
the  shore  gave  way  to  the  worm  creeping  in  the  sod, 
the  engine  to  the  organism,  mechanism  to  biology.  Is 
there  a  teleology  of  nature's  living  history  ?  Is  there 
a  growing  organism  of  organisms  from  the  mollusk  to 
the  man  ?  And  if  it  come  to  a  head  in  man,  does  man 
come  to  a  head  in  anything  ?  He  is  an  end — has  he  an 
end  ?  Has  he  a  chief  end,  a  destiny  ?  How  do  you 
know  ?  \Miat  is  it,  where,  when  ?  Does  the  human 
history  in  which  nature  issues  crown  the  teleological  side 
of  nature  or  the  dysteleological,  the  fitness  of  things  or 
their  '  cussedness  '  ?  Does  it  seal  the  order  or  the  ravage 
of  nature  ?  Does  war  exist  for  peace,  or  peace  for  war  ? 
\Miich  element  is  the  natural  selection  of  history  ?  Is 
there  a  drift  in  all  things  ?  And  is  it  a  torrent  over 
Niagara,  or  a  fine  vapour  steaming,  like  praise,  to  the 
bills  and  the  heavens  ?  Is  the  world  a  whole  ?  And, 
if  it  is,  is  it  a  whole  marmoreal,  statuesque,  and  symme- 
trical, or  organic,  vital,  and  moving.  If  it  move,  what  is  its 
goal  ?  Has  it  a  perfection,  and  is  that  perfection  in  itself  ? 
Such  are  the  questions  that  a  world  calamity  brings 
home  in  passionate  and  tragic  terms.  Perhaps,  if  we 
survey  them  in  our  calm,  we  may  find  an  anchorage  ready 
in  our  storm.  Through  the  clearer  water  we  may  discern 
a  bottom  that  will  hold  when  our  old  moorings  drag. 

Are  you  clear  what  the  questions  are  ? 


n.]        PROBLEMS:  REVELATION  AND  TELEOLOGY        41 

Creation  means  life,  movement,  evolution.  What  is 
the  goal  and  where  ?  We  cannot  see  it  simply  by  looking 
out.  The  future  is  a  book  shut  and  sealed.  The  great 
end  does  not  gleam,  a  City  of  God  with  shining  towers, 
on  the  horizon  that  closes  our  gaze.  Can  we,  then,  pre- 
sume it  from  a  survey  of  history  as  far  as  it  has  gone  ? 
Can  we  calculate  the  final  trend,  if  we  do  not  see  the 
point  of  convergence  ?  How  can  we  ?  How  do  we  know 
how  much  of  history  is  yet  to  run  ?  Is  the  decisive 
part,  the  fifth  act,  yet  to  come  ?  Have  we  any  idea 
in  which  act  we  entered  the  house  ?  We  see  but  a  small 
area  of  all  time  as  yet.  And  the  lines  are  neither  straight, 
nor  on  any  calculable  curve.  They  are  labyrinthine. 
The  Ideal  offers  us  at  best  but  an  asymptotism,  always 
closing  never  meeting,  which  makes  a  certain  irony  for 
progress  and  freedom— perpetual  approximation  mocked 
by  perpetual  severance,  eternal  passion,  and  eternal  pain. 
We  go  forward  sure  of  something  which  is  uncertain,  or, 
at  least,  ever  unattained.  The  soul  craves  a  goal,  and 
the  goal  mocks  the  soul.  The  soul  is  a  whole,  a  unity. 
The  very  pain  of  its  inner  strife  witnesses  to  that.  It 
is  the  only  unity  we  seem  directly  to  know.  Has  it  a 
perfection  ?  Will  its  strife  depart  in  peace  and  a  f ulhiess  of 
days  ?  Is  the  perfecting  of  that  personal  unity  its  des- 
tiny, or  shall  its  warfare  at  a  stage  dissolve  it  to  dust  ? 
The  soul's  own  instinct  is  to  go  on.  But  God  has  set 
a  concern  for  the  world  in  our  heart.  Has  the  world  a 
unity  and  a  destiny  corresponding  to  the  instinct  of  the 
soul  and  to  its  resentment  of  dissolution  ?  From  the 
course  and  curve  of  history  it  is  hard  to  say. 

But,  if  the  destiny  of  the  world  is  to  be  reached  by  no 
induction  from  its  history,  or  any  part  of  its  history  (such 
as  the  modem  world),  is  history  therefore  only  dumb  ? 
Or  shall  we  find  at  some  point  of  crisis  a  significance  we 
miss  in  the  long  lines  of  career  ?     What  is  that  point  ? 


42  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

Ourselves,  our  hearts  ?  Shall  we  trust  the  echo  or  the 
intuition  in  our  own  heart  and  its  S3rmpathies  ?  But 
how  unsteady  !  How  individual !  How  inadequate  for 
history  as  a  whole,  to  say  nothing  of  the  finality  of 
Eternity !  Can  the  Eternal  become  historic  ?  History 
at  large  may  be  personalistic  (as  the  conception  of  the 
group-personality  in  societies  shows),  but  is  it,  is 
Humanity,  a  personality  in  any  such  sense  as  would 
permit  it  to  be  the  vehicle  for  the  revelation  of  a  per- 
sonal Grod  ?  And  were  history  equal  to  the  utterance,  is 
the  Eternal  capable  of  such  self-expression  ?  Is  there  any 
historic  spot  where  Eternity  affirms  in  a  person  the  impres- 
sions of  an  hour,  where  we  are  given  what  we  cannot 
reach,  and  given  it  on  the  world  scale  and  for  ever  ? 
What  we  cannot  achieve,  do  we  receive,  and  receive  in 
advance  as  the  achievement  of  another  ?  Is  there  any 
spot  where  the  whole  world  has  already  come  to  a  head, 
and  God  has  come  to  His  own  ?  Does  the  God  of  the 
world  emerge  as  final  anywhere  within  it  ?  Is  there  any 
soul  which  is  for  history  the  visitation  of  Eternity  ? 
Have  we  any  assurance  in  history  that  it  has  not  only 
an  order  and  course  but  a  final  principle  and  value  ? 
Has  it  a  meaning  behind  all  the  plexus  of  law  and 
cause  that  we  can  trace  in  it  ?  Is  it  a  transparency 
with  its  light  beyond,  or  only  a  scheme  in  black-and- 
white  ?  Has  it  a  worth  beyond  any  system  of  it  ?  Is 
it  expressive  or  stolid  ?  Has  it  a  symbolism  ?  Is  it  a 
sacrament  ?  Does  it  speak  beyond  itself,  and  present 
its  events  in  more  than  a  train  of  sequence  ?  Is  the  past 
but  a  sky  of  formal  constellations,  or  is  it  in  a  grand 
conspiracy  of  eloquence  and  action  ?  Does  it  offer  any- 
thing beyond  the  sight  of  science  to  the  insight  of  soul  ? 
If  it  do,  what  is  it  ?  Is  it  but  the  vague  suggestions 
that  open  to  the  poet,  or  the  moral  monitions  carried 
to  the  prophet  ?  If  it  go  beyond  Buckle,  does  it  stop 
upon  Carlyle  ?    Is  even  insight  all  we  can  reach — spiritual 


n.]       PROBLEIVIS:  REVELATION  AND  TELEOLOGY        43 

penetration  and  grand  surmise  ?  Do  we  come  but  to 
trust  for  the  world  our  best  instincts  enlarged  ?  Is 
religion  but  such  insight  ?  Is  it  but  a  fresh  interpretation 
of  life  by  genius  ?  If  it  is  no  more,  is  it  not  then  the 
monopoly  of  genius,  or  at  least  of  temperament  ?  Have 
we  left  for  real  revelation  a  place  of  its  own  and  a 
function  of  its  own  for  true,  universal  faith,  the  faith 
of  the  ungifted  man  ?  Is  apostolate  but  a  mode 
of  genius  ?  Is  faith  but  instinct's  greatest  and  surest 
intuition  ?  Or  in  revelation  have  we  a  real  gift,  '  a 
synthetic  judgment '  ?  And  in  faith  have  we  a  departure 
as  great  and  new  as  genius,  and  as  much  higher  than 
genius  as  when  genius  rose  from  common  sense  ?  Is  there, 
creating  faith  at  a  historic  point,  something  which  settled 
all  else  in  an  eternal  crisis  and  conquest,  and  which  is 
yet  in  such  an  organic  context  with  the  word  that  it  gives 
meaning  and  certainty  to  all  ?  Have  we  there  the  search- 
light of  the  world,  that  not  only  gleams  forth  through 
the  transparency  of  things,  but  sees  into  us  far  more 
powerfully  than  we  see  into  it,  and  does  for  us  what  we 
can  never  do  for  it  ?  Beyond  its  symbolism  which  shows, 
is  there  anywhere  the  kind  of  revelation  that  acts,  that 
searches,  and,  beyond  searching,  gives,  and,  beyond  giving, 
decides  and  creates  ?  Is  there  any  divine  visitation  that 
puts  us  in  possession,  in  petto,  of  the  goal  of  all  surmise  ? 
Is  there  any  divine  gift  and  deed  that  fixes  the  colours 
seen  by  genius  in  the  eternal  purpose  and  Kingdom  of 
God,  where  all  earth's  hues  are  not  mere  tints  but  jewels 
— ^not  mere  purpureal  gleams,  but  enduring,  precious 
foimdation-stones  ? 

To  all  such  questions  Christianity  answers  with  an 
everlasting  yea,  however  Christendom  may  blur  or  belie 
it.  The  eternal  finality  has  become  a  historic  event. 
There  is  a  point  of  Time  at  which  Time  is  no  longer,  and 
it  passes  into  pure  but  concrete  Eternity.     That  point  is 


44  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [CH. 

Christ.  In  Christ  there  is  a  spot  where  we  are  known  far 
more  than  we  know.  There  is  a  place  where  God  not  only 
speaks  but  comes,  and  not  only  vouches  but  gives,  and 
gives  not  only  Himself  to  the  soul,  but,  by  a  vast  crisis, 
the  soul  to  itself  and  the  world  to  His  Son.  Our  error 
and  uncertainty  go  back  at  last  for  their  power  to  our 
guilt,  and  they  pass  away  in  the  gift  of  the  grace  that 
destroys  it.  The  grace  that  magnifies  the  guilt  in  the 
act  of  mastering  it  takes  away  the  doubt.  Trust  gives 
us  the  security  denied  to  sight.  We  escape  from  evidences 
to  realities.  Our  dreams  of  good  become  the  certainty 
of  Grod.  In  Christ  God  is  not  preached  but  present,  and 
not  only  kind  but  mighty,  not  only  willing  but  initiative, 
creative.  He  does  more  than  justify  faith,  He  creates 
it.  It  is  His  more  than  ours.  We  believe  because  He 
makes  us  believe — with  a  moral  compulsion,  an  invasion 
and  capture  of  us.  He  becomes  our  eternal  life.  To  live 
is  Christ.  He  is  our  destiny.  He  is  our  career.  And  He 
is  the  same  yesterday  and  for  ever.  The  soul's  goal  is 
always  the  soul's  God.  The  world's  perpetual  destiny 
is  the  world's  Eternal  Redeemer.  We  inherit  '  a  finished 
work.'  We  receive,  in  advance,  the  end  of  our  faith, 
which  is  the  salvation  of  our  souls  in  the  salvation  of  a 
world.  We  receive,  in  the  Holy  Spirit  (the  Spirit  of  a 
perfection  which  is  always  completely  its  own  end),  the 
pledge  and  instalment  of  our  common  heritage.  This  talk 
is  scriptural  in  phrase,  but  it  is  not  antiquated  in  sense — 
except  as  we  may  have  come  so  to  regard  the  whole 
miracle  of  the  Spirit,  who  is  always  changing  Time  into 
Eternity,  and  turning  the  Christ  of  the  past  into  the 
soul's  real  present.  We  possess,  in  a  living  and  present 
Christ,  God's  goal  and  destiny  of  the  soul  and  of  the 
world.  We  are  put  (miraculously,  it  is  true,  by  the 
Spirit)  in  possession  of  a  God  whose  holy  self-sufficiency 
secures  the  certainty  of  His  purpose,  and  whose  purpose 
is  the  world's  salvation  to  Himself  in  a  kingdom.    It  is 


n.]       PROBLEMS:  REVELATION  AND  TELEOLOGY         45 

not  a  salvation  to  prosperity,  nor  to  civilisation,  nor  to 
idealism,  but  to  Himself,  to  His  obedience.  His  com- 
munion, His  realm.  In  this  revelation  the  economy  of 
salvation  becomes  the  principle  of  the  movement  of  the 
universe.  Nature  is  but  a  draft  scheme  of  salvation  with 
the  key  on  another  sheet,  where  the  eternal  act  of  re- 
demption is  found  to  carry  and  crown  the  long  process 
ot  creation.  It  is  God's  salvation  of  the  world  that 
dominates  the  long  history  of  the  world — infalHbly,  if 
not  at  every  point  palpably.  Such  is  the  position  of 
Christian  faith,  and  it  is  the  ground  of  all  our  good  hope 
and  sure  outlook  for  the  future.  Such  is  the  nature 
of  Christian  teleology.  It  rises  from  our  experience  of 
the  Christian  revelation. 

The  more  recent  trend  of  the  philosophy  of  history 
points  this  way.  The  temptation  is  strong  for  many 
to-day  to  construe  life  on  a  scheme  of  evolution  borrowed 
from  the  natural  world,  and  passing  through  the  normal 
points  of  birth,  bloom,  and  death.  But  we  are  arrested 
in  this  scheme  by  several  facts  when  we  are  dealing  with 
personal  life.  For  instance,  the  beginning  of  that  Hfe  is 
not  with  birth,  but  with  the  first  exercise  of  the  soul  in 
an  act  of  free  choice.  Then  its  development  does  not 
lie  in  natural  process,  but  in  a  series  of  such  acts  of 
choice,  in  which  the  personality  asserts  itself  against  the 
processes  that  would  but  hurry  it,  as  a  thing,  down  a 
stream.  Its  culmination,  again,  is  not  mere  blossom,  it  is 
not  in  the  easy,  unconscious  play  of  forces,  but  in  the 
deliberate  harmony  of  the  self-asserting  will  with  an  ideal 
conceived,  pursued,  and  more  or  less  attained.  And  finally, 
death  is  not  simply  failure  as  blameless  decay,  but  it  is 
bound  up  with  a  failure  with  which  we  charge  ourselves  ; 
and  our  best  life  is  a  gift  in  the  midst  of  such  failure,  a 
gift  of  mercy,  forgiveness,  redemption,  eternity. 

When  we  pass  from  life  as  merely  organic  to  life  as 


46  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [CH. 

personal,  we  have  to  do  with  something  more  than  mere 
movement ;  it  is  more  even  than  mere  evolution  from 
simple  to  complex,  from  coarse  to  fine.  We  have  to  do 
with  a  history.  And  what  is  a  history  (if  we  begin  with 
the  personal  history  we  know  best)  but  a  movement  in 
which  an  inner  something  that  abides  is  always  being 
translated  into  a  changing  career  more  weighty  and 
more  wide.  The  Eternal  becomes  Time  without  ceasing 
to  be  Eternity.  The  timeless  becomes  historic,  by  a 
process  which  is  the  root  of  all  miracle.  We  are  even 
more  concerned  with  the  inner  identity  than  with  the 
outer  variation,  with  the  reahty  than  with  its  appear- 
ance, with  the  power  than  with  the  plexus  in  which  it 
expands,  with  the  person  than  with  the  career.  It  is 
this  permanent  personal  element  that  is  not  in  nature. 
It  is  this  spiritual  that  is  the  eternal.  Souls  last  longer 
than  systems.  Now  history,  in  the  large  impersonal  sense, 
is  a  system  by  comparison  with  a  soul.  But  yet  even 
that  history  is  not  a  mere  evolution,  not  a  mere  series 
of  phases,  not  a  mere  chain  of  phenomena.  It  is  the 
evolution  of  something.  It  is  something  evolving.  And 
it  is  an  evolution  that  does  not  go  on  in  the  way  of  nature, 
merely  as  a  deeper  comphcation  and  finer  interaction  of 
phenomena.  The  introduction  of  the  idea  of  the  group- 
personahty  into  history  brings  with  it  that  action  I  have 
named  of  translation,  the  translation  of  an  inner  power 
into  an  outer  phase.  The  form  in  which  the  onward  move- 
ment takes  place  is  a  series,  not  of  phases,  but  of  some- 
thing far  more — of  decisions  more  or  less  free  by  an  inner 
soul  and  will,  self-assertions  of  the  thing  that  abides. 
This  is  the  feature  of  personaUty ;  and  though  it  cannot 
be  applied  to  history  as  a  whole  offhand,  though  humanity 
is  not  a  great  person,  yet  it  holds  of  personality  so  far 
as  that  the  great  personaHties  are  its  great  agents.  When 
we  are  speaking  of  personal  growth,  therefore,  and  indeed 
of  history  altogether,  whether  individual  or  corporate. 


n.]        PROBLEMS:  REVELATION  AND  TELEOLOGY         47 

as  distinct  from  the  evolutionary  pomp,  we  are  in  another 
category  than  natural  process.  We  have  not  only  a  differ- 
ence from  nature,  we  have  a  reversal  of  nature ;  for  our 
choice  can  go  back  on  nature's  process.  It  is  nature  taken 
in  hand  by  an  inner  power,  with  a  freedom  above  nature. 
Thus  the  notion  is  not  one  of  life  blooming  and  then  fading, 
with  a  vital  rise  and  a  dying  fall.  Life  has  what  has 
been  called  a  dramatic  character.  Will  is  involved  in  it — 
choice,  conscience,  reason,  and  action.  It  is  a  movement, 
a  crescendo,  of  moral  action,  and  not  of  natural  process. 
Nay,  it  is  further  said,  and  with  poignant  truth,  that 
it  is,  in  most  cases,  not  dramatic  simply  but  tragic.  But 
it  is  tragic  in  a  deeper  than  the  outward,  obvious,  and 
impressive  sense.  It  is  not  the  tragedy  of  an  external 
fate  falling  on  the  inner  will.  It  is  the  tragedy  of  the 
inner  will  itself  falling.  It  is  the  man's  own  fall,  and 
not  the  fall  of  his  fortunes.  It  is  his  moral  tragedy,  the 
fall  not  from  happiness  but  from  holiness — the  tragedy 
not  simply  of  gloom  but  of  guilt.  Behind  all  the  tragedies 
of  incident  lies  the  tragedy  of  guilt.  And  the  supreme 
theodicy  is  that  which  adjusts  with  the  goodness  of  God 
not  the  appalling  catastrophes  men  suffer,  but  the  less 
striking,  though  more  paralysing,  tragedy  of  what  they 
have  done  and  become. 

This  is  a  line  of  thought  which  is  forced  upon  us  as 
soon  as  we  begin  to  give  the  individual  his  due  value  in 
the  system  of  things  or  ideas.  The  ideal  construction  of 
history,  which  came  to  a  head  in  the  impressive  archi- 
tecture of  Hegelianism,  fell  and  broke  upon  the  new 
sense  in  the  nineteenth  century  of  the  value  of  the  indi- 
vidual. And  not  only  on  his  value  in  the  sense  of  his 
preciousness,  but  in  the  sense  of  his  power,  the  sense  of 
him  as  a  creative,  invasive,  deflective,  incalculable  power. 
In  Hegel's  system  there  is  no  room  left  for  such  an  indi- 
vidual, and  that  was  the  defect  that  brought  down  its 


48  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

grand  flight.  A  closer  and  more  scientific  treatment  of 
history  showed  that  ideas  have  been  effective  only  as 
they  passed  through  the  thought  of  individual  person- 
alities, and  were  stamped  or  driven  by  their  will.  The 
general  hnes,  the  great  features,  the  imperial  ideas  of 
history  were  not  all,  nor  even  most.  Taken  alone,  they 
bleached  all  the  complexion  out  of  history,  and  left  but 
a  pale  form,  moving  but  anaemic.  They  had  a  far  more 
vital  and  organic  connection  with  their  personal  agents 
than  Hegel  allowed  ;  these  were  not  mere  wires  on  which 
the  ideas  travelled  nor  vortices  where  they  met.  Man 
was  made  a  living  soul  by  a  life-giving  Spirit,  he  was  not 
the  pawn  of  a  moving  process  even  of  thought. 

What  did  this  change  mean  from  our  point  of  view  ? 
It  meant  that  the  key  of  history  was  to  be  sought  in  the 
will  as  free  and  not  as  the  puppet  of  ideas  nor  as  a  vortex 
of  force.  It  lay  in  a  soul  and  not  in  a  system.  It  was 
found  by  faith  in  a  soul  and  not  by  sight  of  a  scheme. 
If  the  individual  is  a  synthesis  of  influences  and  directives, 
he  is  yet  not  a  mere  resultant.  He  is  what  Wundt  calls 
*  a  creative  synthesis.'  He  is  not  simply  a  crossing  point 
nor  a  point  of  fusion  ;  he  contributes.  He  gives  as  truly 
as  he  receives,  and  if  he  do  not  give  he  ceases  to  receive. 
He  brings  to  the  ideas  round  him  something  more  than 
they  supply.  There  is  a  miraculous  something  in  him  as 
effect  which  is  not  in  them  as  cause.  He  is  himself  a 
directive.  There  is  in  the  man  a  reacting,  and  controlling, 
and  constructing  power  over  the  influences  that  produced 
him.  And  in  that  element  Hes  the  key  of  history. 
Thought  has  turned  from  tracing  the  drift  in  a  whole  to 
trusting  the  gift  in  a  soul.  It  has  turned  from  speculation 
to  revelation,  from  revelation  as  truth  to  revelation  as 
Person,  from  the  certainty  of  induction  to  that  of  in- 
spiration, from  synthesis  to  intuition,  from  laws  to  powers, 
from  the  revelation  in  order  to  the  redemption  in  crisis, 
from  the  social  order  to  social  catastrophe,  judgment,  and 


n.]        PROBLEMS:  REVELATION  AND  TELEOLOGY        49 

regeneration.  Interest  has  passed  from  the  classic  to  the 
romantic,  from  the  symmetry  of  ubiquitous  evolution  in 
history  to  the  broken  eloquence  of  its  symbolism,  from 
its  system  to  its  meaning,  from  historical  constructions  to 
historical  values.  The  constellations  of  affairs  rain  in- 
fluence down.  We  turn  from  the  mere  march  of  events 
to  their  formative  goal,  and  its  incessant  reaction  upon 
their  course.  We  are  led  by  a  light  and  power  that  beats 
back  on  us. 

The  permanent  thing,  therefore,  which  makes  move- 
ment history,  and  corresponds  to  the  ego  in  the  changing 
man,  is  not  a  grand  etre  suffusing  the  historic  career  in  a 
monistic  way  ;  but  it  is  a  living  person  acting  (at  a  lower 
stage)  like  the  Holy  Spirit  which  makes  an  association  a 
church.  It  is  there,  in  that  person,  that  we  have  the 
purpose  not  of  history  only  but  of  creation.  All  the  world 
is  a  means,  and  its  fashion  passes  away ;  but  the  soul  is 
its  end  and  that  abides  for  ever.  All  is  but  machinery 
just  meant  to  give  a  bent  to  the  soul  ;  God  and  the  soul 
endure.  The  centre  and  goal  of  things  is  where  the  soul 
of  God  and  the  soul  of  man  completely  meet,  not  in  mere 
rapture  but  in  action.  But  in  this  region  facts  cease 
to  be  things  and  become  persons  and  events.  And  if 
this  centre  is  a  fact  and  not  a  mere  ideal,  it  is  a  historic 
and  personal  fact.  It  is  Christ.  The  revelation,  and, 
therefore,  the  justification,  of  God  is  not  to  be  found  in 
a  visible  convergence  of  all  things  upon  a  perfectly  happy 
state,  but  in  the  eternal  meaning  and  action  of  a  per- 
fectly holy  soul  in  the  profoundest  human  crisis.  It  Hes 
in  His  action  upon  the  soul's  relations,  especially  with 
God,  and  upon  the  dramatic,  tragic  course  of  affairs. 
The  final  theodicy  is  in  no  discovered  system,  no  revealed 
plan,  but  in  an  effected  redemption.  It  is  not  in  the 
grasp  of  ideas,  nor  in  the  adjustment  of  events,  but  in 
the  destruction  of  guilt  and  the  taking  away  of  the  sin 
of  the  world.     Behind  the  tragedy  of  fate  to  man's  happi- 


50  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

ness,  I  have  said,  is  the  will's  tragedy  to  God's  holiness, 
the  tragedy  of  guilt.  And  a  God  who  can  deal  in  mercy 
with  that  has  fully  in  hand,  at  the  long  last,  the  misery 
and  mystery  of  man's  fate.  The  agony  in  the  garden 
heals  all  the  agony  of  the  race. 

That  is  to  say,  for  Christian  faith,  there  is  a  sure  goal 
of  the  world,  and  a  controlling  teleology  thereto  ;  which 
is  not  only  indicated,  as  a  poet's  great  surmise,  nor  only 
announced  as  a  prophet's  burthen,  but  is  given  in  Chris- 
tianity as  a  God-accomplished  fact,  as  the  new  creation,  the 
Reconciliation.  The  gift  is  the  world's  new  birth  in  pain, 
not  its  happy  rehabiUtation.  It  is  the  ReconciUation,  and 
not  simply  the  means  to  come  by  it.  The  Cross  is  not 
the  machinery  of  it  but  the  exercise  of  it,  its  action  not 
its  preliminary.  Behind  the  first  creation  God  was 
always  the  new  Creator.  The  final  reconciliation  is 
always  in  God's  possession  ('  Son,  Thou  art  ever  with 
Me ') ;  and,  by  His  gift  in  Christ,  it  becomes  a  possession 
of  ours  as  we  are  in  Christ.  The  ruUng  passion  of  our 
moral  person  for  perfection  receives  its  consummation 
there — in  that  crisis  of  cosmic  regeneration.  We  come 
to  ourselves  in  the  soul-certainty  of  faith,  which  believes 
that  the  world  is  the  work,  the  end,  and  the  trophy  of  a 
perfectly  Holy  God,  and  that  it  is  therefore  for  him  already 
perfect  in  His  Son,  it  is  already  a  saved  whole.  And,  in 
the  same  act  and  paradox  of  faith,  we  know  that  our  souls, 
though  so  deeply  involved  in  the  vast  world,  are  at  the 
same  time  also  microcosmic  wholes.  They  are  involved 
in  it  in  such  a  way  as  still  to  be  ends  in  their  social  selves, 
and  not  merely  means  to  a  social  whole.  We  seize  the 
paradox,  so  vital  to  religious  experience,  of  a  Whole  of 
wholes,  a  paradox  which  can  only  be  expoimded  by  a 
philosophy  of  personaHty  with  its  unique  power  of  inter- 
penetration,  mutual  involution,  and  reciprocal  indwelling. 

That  is  to  say,  there  is  a  teleology  of  the  whole  world, 


n.]       PROBLEMS:  REVELATION  AND  TELEOLOGY         51 

but  it  is  only  for  Christian  faith — only  in  virtue  of  the 
salvation  of  a  world  in  which  each  soul  is  worth  more 
than  a  world  without  soul.  It  is  quite  absurd  and  quite 
indubitable.  The  only  possible  teleology  is  an  evangelical. 
It  is  of  grace  and  faith  on  an  imaginative  scale.  To  use 
the  language  of  theology,  it  is  a  teleology  only  guaranteed 
by  a  soteriology.  The  only  perfection  is  in  salvation. 
We  are  bom  not  to  prosper  but  to  be  redeemed.  The 
unity  of  the  race  is  only  sure  in  its  goal,  and  that  is  its 
redemption.  It  is  the  unity  of  a  world  of  personal  ends 
reborn.  We  believe  in  a  great  destiny  for  the  world 
because  we  have  a  faith  in  its  redemption  which  rests  on 
the  experience  of  our  own,  but  is  no  mere  expansion  of 
it.  We  believe  in  human  nature  by  a  faith  neither  in 
its  excellence,  its  prosperity,  nor  its  civilisation  ;  in  the 
strength  neither  of  an  apparent  trend  to  amehoration,  nor 
of  a  growing  consecration  of  happiness,  nor  of  an  ideal 
glorification  of  Humanity ;  but  as  a  result  of  our  Hving 
faith  in  the  world's  Redeemer  and  His  Redemption.  That 
is  the  only  teleology  of  the  world  which  is  as  sure  as 
sorrow,  death,  the  soul,  or  its  God.  Of  course  it  is  theo- 
logical religion.  A  religion  without  a  theology  can  never 
be  a  world  religion.    It  cannot  assure  the  world  of  a  future. 

There  was  an  occasion  when  Christ  was  asked  a  question 
of  theological  curiosity — ^if  the  goal  of  salvation  would 
include  few  or  many.  And  His  answer,  nationally  viewed, 
was  disappointing — as  if  for  Him  such  an  inquiry  was 
academic,  or  only  inquisitive.  He  converted  it  at  once 
into  a  religious  occasion.  He  turned  it  into  the  central 
and  primary  theology,  where  we  are  not  merely  curious 
but  concerned.  He  said  that  such  inquiries  could  only 
be  solved  practically,  only  if  a  greater  question  were  first 
settled  for  our  own  soul ;  that  eschatology  was  a  matter 
of  soteriology,  and  soteriology  a  matter  of  personal  salva- 
tion ;   that  we  had  no  key  to  the  eternal  future  of  others 


52  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

except  what  we  had  for  our  own  ;  that  our  interest  in 
the  saving  of  the  world  might  be  perverted  to  submerge 
our  own  salvation  ;  that,  in  the  desire  to  know,  or  even 
in  our  haste  to  effect,  the  destiny  of  the  race,  we  might 
miss  in  our  soul  the  certainty  which  was  the  root  of  all 
other.  '  Are  the  saved  few  ? '  '  Few  enough  to  make 
you  afraid  you  may  not  be  there.  See  to  your  entry. 
The  religious  inquisitives  may  be  eternal  failures.  So 
may  the  religious  bustlers.  You  must  taste  salvation  to 
discuss  it.  You  must  experience  the  world's  salvation  to 
deal  with  the  saving  of  the  world '  (Luke  xiii.  23).  As 
if  He  should  say  :  '  Acquaint  yourself  with  what  Grod 
has  done.  Immerse  yourself  in  it.  The  consummation 
will  not  come  by  man's  gradual  organisation  "under  a 
law  of  love,  but  by  the  consummating  Act  and  Gift  of 
God  in  His  Kingdom  and  its  righteousness — ^by  that  and 
each  man's  part  in  it.' 

But  that  Act  it  was  far  from  easy  to  take  home.  Grace 
is  free  but  not  easy.  It  was  not  in  the  growth  of  man's 
delectable  breadth  and  charity  that  Christ  found  the  way 
to  heaven  ;  He  cast  His  inquirers  upon  a  narrow  way 
ending  in  a  strait  gate.  It  was  not  to  a  wider  knowledge 
or  a  larger  vision  that  He  looked  for  the  central  and  final 
theodicy.  The  only  final  theodicy  He  knew  was  God's  saving 
Act,  in  which  He  Himself  grew  more  and  more  straitened 
till  it  was  accomplished.  To  know  and  taste  that  was 
everything.  The  world's  history  did  not  make  for  Him 
the  world's  final  judgment ;  it  worked  up  to  such  a 
judgment,  where  He  is  Himself  on  the  bench.  Love's 
straightening  for  a  tangled  world  was  a  cure  for  its  sin — 
it  was  propitiation,  the  mercy  of  the  Cross.  '  Herein  is 
love — that  He  gave  His  Son  as  propitiation.'  Love  that 
meets  need  finds  that  to  be  the  chief  need.  Its  first  last 
gift  to  man  is  the  Cross.  This  Cross  became  not  only  a 
rescue  from  a  strait  but  the  principle  and  measure  of  the 
whole  world.     The  Lord  of  the  Cross  is  the  final  trustee 


n.]   PROBLEMS:  REVELATION  AND  TELEOLOGY   53 

of  universal  judgment.  The  whole  purpose  of  history, 
if  we  are  to  believe  Christ,  was  something  more  than  the 
disentangling  of  a  moral  muddle,  the  evolution  of  a  moral 
order,  or  even  the  growth  of  a  moral  personality ;  it  was 
the  redemption  of  that  personality.  Its  final  ethic  is 
that  involved  in  faith  with  its  justif3ring,  regenerating 
power.  It  was  to  bring  every  man  to  deal  with  Him  as 
Saviour,  to  plant  every  man  at  last  before  the  judgment- 
seat  of  His  Cross  and  Grace,  to  work  in  every  man  the 
supreme  conviction  of  belonging  to  Him,  and  finding  in 
Him  his  own  new  soul — new,  yet  his  own.  So  that  no 
man  comes  to  himself  till  he  come  to  Him,  and  the  world 
does  not  '  arrive '  till  it  settle  to  rest  in  Him.  That  is 
the  Christian  teleology  of  history,  whether  we  accept  it 
or  do  not.  Christ,  judge  and  justifier,  is  the  one  theodicy. 
The  whole  race  says,  '  for  me  to  live  is  Christ.'  Every- 
thing exists  for  Him — love,  culture,  war,  tragedy,  glory. 
He  is  the  one  moral  touchstone  of  God  and  man  for  ever, 
the  crucial  point  of  the  eternal  and  immutable  moraUty 
of  the  Holy. 

To  believe  in  a  teleology,  we  must  be  in  possession  of 
the  telos.  What  is  called  realism  is  here  as  useless  as 
what  is  known  as  idealism.  Any  photographic  or  punctili- 
ous reality  is,  and  must  always  be,  incomplete.  It  is 
sterile  to  refer  us  to  facts  till  we  settle  the  selection  of 
the  facts.  Only  certain  facts  are  fertile.  We  must  have 
an  end  to  guide  our  choice.  We  need  the  significate  to 
complete  the  symbol,  the  meaning  to  finish  the  fact.  The 
literary  type  of  realism  goes  in  blinkers — seeing  keenly, 
but  only  what  is  under  its  nose.  It  does  not  lift  up  its 
head  even  to  look  for  the  reality  that  closes  the  vista  of 
its  realities.  Hence  its  views  oscillate  from  optimism  to 
pessimism ;  even  in  the  serious  philosophies  they  do, 
from  the  days  of  Epicurus  and  Zeno  to  Hegel  and  von 
Hartmann.     Hence  also  it  does  not  pass  beyond  process 


54  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [gh. 

to  purpose  (as  the  Monism  of  the  day  does  not).  So  we 
must  begin  with  the  end,  taken  as  a  gift.  We  must 
carry  it  back  to  the  beginning.  The  purpose  is  not 
revealed  in  the  process,  but  the  process  in  the  purpose. 
That  is  the  guide  in  our  selection  and  treatment  of  facts — 
at  least  in  the  moral  world.  The  savage  does  not  explain 
the  saint,  but  the  saint  the  savage.  Creation  does  not 
explain  Christianity,  but  Christianity  creation.  We  cannot 
frame  some  teleology  of  life,  and  then  rise  from  it  to  a 
Hving  Grod  who  is  serviceable  to  it ;  but  we  must  descend 
upon  it  from  that  God,  from  a  God  otherwise  given, 
self-given,  given,  therefore,  with  absolute  certainty,  and 
not  with  a  high  probability.  For  He  is  the  end.  He  does 
not  simply  cherish  it,  and  He  does  not  simply  declare  it, 
and  He  does  not  simply  produce  it.  He  is  our  peace. 
We  began  in  Him  in  whom  we  end.  We  die  in  our  nest. 
The  light  of  our  first  sight  came  from  Him  who  is  the 
object  of  our  last  faith.  Our  great  destiny  is  as  certain 
as  He  is  absolute  and  holy.  But  we  possess  such  a 
God,  the  Reahty  of  reality,  and  the  Act  in  all  action, 
only  in  Christ,  the  historic  Christ  on  His  Cross.  Though 
God  is  hinted  freely  in  the  world,  we  possess  Him  securely 
and  finally  only  in  Jesus  Christ,  the  Redeemer,  the 
Redeemer  of  the  conscience,  the  Holy  Redeemer.  Who 
thus  masters  conscience  is  King  of  men.  He  masters 
man's  inner  master.  Who  masters  it  by  forgiveness  is 
King  of  Love,  of  a  Holy  Love,  a  moral  Eternity,  a  realm 
of  righteousness.  The  King  of  Holy  Love  is  righteous 
Lord  of  all  the  Eternity  that  we  crave  or  He  reveals. 

With  this  security  we  can  sit  loosely  to  many  anomahes 
which  seem  to  rule  God  out  of  the  course  of  things.  Our 
faith  did  not  arise  from  the  order  of  the  world  ;  the  world's 
convulsion,  therefore,  need  not  destroy  it.  Rather  it  rose 
from  the  sharpest  crisis,  the  greatest  war,the  deadliest  death, 
and  the  deepest  grave  the  world  ever  knew — in  Christ's 
Cross.    We  see  not  yet  all  things  brought  imder  salvation, 


n.]       PROBLEMS :  REVELATION  AND  TELEOLOGY        55 

but  we  see  Jesus  the  Saviour  of  all.  We  taste  Him.  The 
Church  is  not  there  to  exhibit  progress  and  its  optimism, 
but  to  reveal  Christ  and  His  regenerating  power.  Most 
of  the  detail  of  His  working  is  hidden  from  us  ;  what 
He  is  and  does  for  our  own  soul  is  mostly  unknown  to 
us  ;  but  there  is  no  reality  unknown  to  Him,  and  no 
crisis  unprovided  for,  or  out  of  hand.  The  wisdom  of  God 
is  the  deepest  wisdom  of  the  world.  It  is  its  latent  pro- 
cess (Eph.  iii.  9-11  ;  Rom.  xvi.  25,  27).  The  grace  of 
God,  with  its  method,  is  the  ground  plan  of  the  universe 
(unless  Christ  be  a  fine  failure).  All  the  old  creation  runs 
up  into  it,  all  the  new  flows  down  from  it.  We  do  not 
trace  it  at  every  stage  of  development,  but  we  trust  and 
worship  its  constant  action  none  the  less.  The  gift  to  us 
is  not  a  system  of  theodicy  at  work  but  Holy  Love's 
omnipotence  in  command.  To  know  Christ's  Grod,  as 
apostles  expound  His  revelation,  is  to  know  the  long 
dominants  of  order  and  purpose  in  nature  and  history. 
His  glory  is  His  majesty,  and  His  majesty  is  His  mercy, 
and  His  mercy  is  by  judgment  unto  holy  victory  and 
endless  peace.  In  face  of  the  horrors,  moral  and  physical, 
around  us,  and  amid  all  misgivings,  that  is  our  faith,  our 
stay,  and  our  last  word. 


60  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 


CHAPTER  III 

METAPHYSIG   AND  REDEMPTION 

Some  are  much  fascinated  by  a  reasoned  Pessimism  which 
seems  to  them  the  happy  combination  of  the  monistic 
idea,  which  is  so  modem,  and  the  redemptive  idea,  which 
is  so  Christian.  And  they  are  led  to  think  that  this  com- 
bination offers,  in  the  region  of  thought,  that  reconcilia- 
tion which  is  also  such  a  Christian  idea.  Those  who  are 
thus  interested  are  the  few  probably,  and  outside  of  them 
the  rest  may  find  the  discussion  not  only  uninteresting 
but  unintelligible.  Such  may  be  advised  to  pass  over 
this  chapter,  where  I  wish  to  return  to  the  previous  one, 
and  to  the  former  of  the  two  classes  named  at  its  outset. 

I  will  venture  to  place  before  me  a  monist,  of  the  views 
there  described,  and  I  will  ask  him  to  follow  me  from 
what  I  take  to  be  a  common  point  of  departure,  as  it 
might  be  set  forth  bj^  a  sympathetic  thinker  like  Edward 
von  Hartmann,  who  keeps  moral  and  spiritual  issues 
well  in  view,  and  especially  the  need  of  redemption, 
however  pessimistically  construed.  Let  us  begin  with  the 
recognition  of  an  objective  order  and  of  a  dreadful  breach 
in  it  which  is  fundamentally  moral,  whether  the  explana- 
tion of  the  breach  be  theological  or  not.  Let  us  then  ask 
this  question.  Is  there  in  the  moral  order  a  self-healing 
power,  as  nature  overgrows  in  course  of  time  catastrophes 
volcanic  in  violence  and  in  area  continental  ?  Has  it  a  vis 
medicatrix,  a  power  of  innate  self-recuperation,  correspond- 
ing to  what  we  find  in  physical  organisms  ?     Is  there  in  it 


m.]  METAPHYSIC  AND  REDEMPTION  57 

an  indwelling  tendency  which  moves  to  repair  all  damage 
at  last,  and  a  power  to  overbear  those  elements  which  arrest 
its  development  ?  Has  the  moral  order  this  successful  power 
of  self-assertion  against  its  foe  ?  Can  it  carry  it  to  the 
pitch  of  self-establishment  ?  Can  it  at  last  plant  itself 
on  the  universe  and  in  command  of  it  ?  Is  the  seK- 
assertion  not  only  indomitable  as  a  spirit  and  tendency, 
but  is  it  effective,  is  it  irresistible,  in  the  result  ?  Can 
it  secure  its  own  end  ? 

This  is  a  question  which  resolves  itself  into  another. 
I  have  just  spoken  of  the  end.  Is  that  end  only  some- 
thing far  off  ?  Is  the  path  to  it  only  tentative  ?  What 
is  a  real  means  ?  Do  the  movements  toward  the  end 
only  peer  and  grope  ?  Do  they  only  stumble  about, 
feeling  this  way  and  that  with  awful  tentacles  and  ex- 
periments, till  one  of  them  happen  to  light  upon  the  end  ? 
Have  we  any  security  that  one  ever  will  light  upon  it  ? 
Or  is  it  rather  thus  ?  Is  the  end  already  there,  deeply 
there  and  working  itself  out  ?  Is  it  deeply  and  domi- 
nantly  imbedded  in  the  whole  process,  forming  a  per- 
manent touchstone  there  for  a  true  means,  and  refusing 
all  false  avenues  by  a  native  flair?  Is  there  always  within 
the  moral  order,  however  eclipsed,  the  active  immanence 
of  its  own  end,  its  own  goal  ? 

So  long  as  it  is  not  a  question  of  a  conscious  immanence 
our  monist  friend  would  probably  say,  Yes,  if  he  were 
of  the  ethical  breed  and  spiritual  sensibility  of  which  I 
have  named  von  Hartmann  as  a  fine  example.  But  there 
is  a  third  alternative.  The  end,  however  immanent,  may 
be,  still  more  deeply,  a  given  thing,  a  donation  rather 
than  a  product,  a  redemption  rather  than  a  recuperation. 
Is  it  certain  whether  the  recovery  is  a  native  reaction  in 
the  moral  order  or  an  importation  into  it  from  something 
more  than  a  moral  order,  from  personality  ?  and  if  it  be  im- 
ported is  it  imported  as  a  reality  by  the  power  of  a  divine 
personality,  or  merely  as  a  construction  by  the  imperious 


58  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

habit  of  our  personality  ?  Is  it  Grod's  recovery  or  our  dis- 
covery ?  If  we  think  of  this  order  monistically,  simply  as 
the  active  voiio^,  or  norm,  or  uniform  behaviour  of  a  univer- 
sal substance,  have  we  more  to  go  on  than  a  presumption 
or  an  impression  when  we  cherish  a  faith  in  its  final  reign  ? 
Will  things  end  where  they  seem  to  tend  ?  Has  law  its 
own  guarantee  of  finality  ?  Regulative  law,  organising, 
punitive  law,  has  little  of  a  saving  element  in  itself.  Mere 
order,  with  all  its  uniformity  or  consistency,  need  not  be 
eternal.  Mere  pressure  need  not  be  permanent.  There 
may  one  day  be  an  outleap  of  hidden  fires  which  are 
quite  unknown  or  unsuspected  now,  and  which  make  all 
known  pressures  fly.  The  decisive  thing  is  not  in  law 
but  in  that  force  behind  law.  Is  that  control  calculable  ? 
Is  it  certain  by  any  means,  whether  calculable  or  not  ? 
Can  it  be  relied  on  ?  Well,  if  it  can  neither  be  trusted 
nor  got  at,  faith  is  impossible.  It  is  only  when  we  find 
in  movement  and  its  law  more  than  law,  only  when  we 
discover  a  control  of  control,  that  our  faith  and  hope 
rise  as  to  the  future.  And  for  the  conviction  of  eternal 
permanence  and  victory  we  must  realise  that  always 
behind  and  within  the  empirical  vojio^  there  is  the  ideal 
but  potent  Te\o<^ — whose  end  is  always  in  itself.  The 
great,  final,  and  absolute  reality  is  immanently  and 
urgently  coming  to  itself  in  all  the  ordered  action  of  the 
hour. 

But  now  what  is  the  nature  of  that  reality  which  besets 
us  before  and  behind,  that  end  which  not  only  waits 
for  us  but  works  in  us,  and  works  especially  in  the  way 
of  repair,  redemption,  and  reconciliation  ?  What  is  the 
nature  of  an  end  that  can  realise  itself  in  the  face  of  all 
opposition  ?  This  is  a  question  which  makes  some  demand 
on  philosophical  thought,  not  to  say  metaphysical  lan- 
guage. The  object  of  philosophy  is  totality.  It  lives  in 
the  whole.    It  works  with  wholes.     It  regards  the  abso- 


m.]  METAPHYSIC  AND  REDEMPTION  69 

lute,  the  fundamental,  final  whole  in  everything.  While 
the  Philistines  laugh  an  accomplished  writer  in  The  Times, 
just  as  I  pen  these  words,  analyses  laughter  itself  into 
a  mode  of  our  inextinguishable  intuition  of  the  absolute 
which  thus  besets  us  before  and  behind,  and  is  in  our  best 
nonsense  its  real  charm.  All  this  casts  us  upon  a  meta- 
physic.  We  can  no  longer  rest  content  \\dth  philosophic 
Agnosticism.  Metaphysic  is  the  philosophy  of  totality. 
But  we  have  now  gone  further.  We  have  passed  beyond 
a  metaphysic  of  mere  rarefied  substance  for  that  totality, 
what  might  be  called  the  metaphysic  of  obvious  and 
amateur  pantheism.  This  handles  only  a  totality  of  mere 
pervasive  but  static  being — a  universal.  But  a  universal 
is  not  the  same  as  a  whole  ;  it  is  only  a  factor  of  the 
whole.  It  may  be,  like  the  ether,  a  very  thin  universal 
without  the  content  and  wealth  of  a  whole.  But  we 
go  further  still.  Besides  escaping  from  mere  substance, 
we  pass  beyond  the  notion  of  a  totality  of  thought.  Pure 
thought,  however  encyclopaedic,  however  universal,  cannot 
cope  with  the  wealth  of  the  whole ;  were  it  as  archi- 
tectonic as  Hegel's,  it  cannot.  It  is  not  dynamic,  not 
creative,  enough.  It  is  not  full  enough.  What  we  have 
to  do  with  is  not  the  kind  of  fullness  represented  by 
saturated  being,  nor  even  being  which  is  self -organising, 
self- consistent,  and  self-contained.  It  is  not  fundamental 
thought  we  have  to  do  with  but  fundamental  energy,  which 
has  power  not  simply  to  pose  its  opposite,  the  inert,  but 
to  transform  it  continually  into  the  energetic.  The  full- 
ness of  the  whole  earth  is  a  fullness  flushed  and  glorious 
in  power.  An  ontological  metaphysic  is  replaced  by  a 
metaphysic  of  energy,  whose  business  is  to  develop  the 
notion  not  of  an  abstract  universal,  but  of  a  concrete 
totality,  a  living,  rich,  and  inexhaustible  whole,  a  fullness 
of  power  and  life.  New  theories  and  hypotheses  are  to 
be  rated  not  by  how  they  look  but  by  what  they  can 
do ;  not  by  their  skill  of  ranging  themselves  in  the  good 


60  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

society  of  systems,  but  by  their  power  to  work,  and  to 
work  initiatively — not  simply  to  be  effective  but  to  be 
creative.     The  one  God  is  He  who  makes  the  new  man. 

But,  when  we  come  to  energy  and  action,  can  we  stop 
there  ?  Can  we  stop  short  of  the  supreme  kind  of  action 
which  we  call  an  act,  a  moral  act  ?  The  moral  interest 
remains  uppermost,  where  it  was  when  we  started  with  the 
moral  order  ;  but  we  pass  now  from  moral  order  to  moral 
action.  That  is  more  than  mere  vitaUty,  force,  or  move- 
ment on  certain  lines  of  law  guiding  conduct.  We  de- 
scribe movement  as  moral  for  other  reasons  than  because 
it  works  well  and  smoothly  for  the  harmony  of  a  system 
or  the  happiness  of  a  group.  That  need  not  carry  us 
beyond  mere  utility.  We  mean  the  kind  of  movement 
possible  only  to  a  personality ;  we  mean  moral  action, 
action  carrjdng  the  stamp  of  that  personality  and  revealing 
it.  We  mean  movement  which  not  only  makes  for  an  end 
but  for  an  end  it  selects,  and  selects  for  reasons  drawn  from 
its  own  nature,  selects,  therefore,  by  a  moral  necessity ; 
it  is  movement  that  makes  for  an  end  of  purpose,  and 
one  to  which  it  has  power  to  bend  other  movements  or 
things.  This  is  the  kind  of  energy  of  which  we  are  most 
conscious,  the  only  kind  we  truly  and  intimately  realise — 
the  energy  of  ourselves — the  energy  we  are.  We  there- 
fore pass  from  energetic  idealism  to  personal  ideaUsm. 
And,  if  we  are  not  to  stick  in  Solipsism,  we  construe  the 
universe  in  terms  of  its  crowning  product,  soul,  conscience, 
and  society.  It  exists  for  the  growing  of  personality  which 
is  an  end  in  itself,  and,  in  so  far  as  it  serves,  it  serves 
only  another  personality,  and  grows  men  of  God,  who 
is  the  end  for  all  ends.  Among  personalities  (when  we 
pass  beyond  the  dear)  we  are  interested  chiefly  in  the 
classic,  and  above  all,  the  providential  personalities. 
And  among  these  above  all  is  that  One  who  has  His 
universal   end   completely  in   Himself,   who   is   identical 


m.]  METAPHYSIC  AND  REDEMPTION  61 

with  the  end  of  the  disordered  universe  —  with  its 
redemption.  He  is  the  Redeemer  because  He  is  identical 
with  His  own  redemption. 

The  last  reality,  when  reaUty  is  so  understood,  so 
morally  and  personally,  is  the  Holy.  The  moral  order 
of  society  has  the  absolute  morality,  the  Holy,  working 
almightily  in  it.  That  is  to  say,  the  supreme  interest  of 
society  is  not  progress  but  the  moral  eternity  active  in 
every  stage  of  progress,  and  mighty  to  redeem  its  regress. 
It  is  not  progress,  but  that  complete,  absolute,  unprogres- 
sive  realit}^  which  is  both  source,  impulse,  and  law  for 
all  progress,  and  which  tests  every  movement  as  progress 
by  the  extent  to  which  it  gives  active,  holy  reality  effect. 
Progress  itself  is  left  behind  by  this  interest.  It  ceases 
to  ride  men  like  an  incubus  or  a  fate  when  they  are  really 
concerned  about  eternity.  And  nothing  is  progress 
which  does  not  carry  home  our  freedom  from  it,  the 
emancipation  from  it  of  those  who  once  thought  we  could 
be  made  free  by  it  and  it  alone.  The  root  of  all  progress 
is  redemption  and  regeneration  by  the  Holy,  the  Eternal. 

\ATiere  shall  we  find  the  providential  reality  then  ? 
Surely  where  we  find  in  history  the  holy  and  its  finality. 
Surely  in  the  region  of  energetic,  that  is  to  say  experi- 
mental, religion — in  Christ.  Not  in  religious  thought,  nor 
in  moral  action  of  the  more  outward  and  pedestrian  sort, 
but  in  the  morality  which  we  feel  working  most  mightily 
in  the  sanctifjring  grace  that  rescues,  rules,  and  shapes 
our  inmost  life  as  a  race  ;  in  morality  of  the  grand  style 
— in  justification  ;  in  Redemption,  as  not  only  a  new  de- 
parture but  a  new  creation,  in  the  morality  of  the  new 
birth  and  the  new  righteousness  which  make  us  really  men 
of  God.  We  turn  to  the  moral  energy  whose  righteous- 
ness transcends  all  distributive  justice,  and  which  is  known 
by  us  as  the  foundation,  redemption,  and  destiny  of  the 
world  because  it  is  the  grace  and  providence  we  find  at 


62  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

work  founding  our  own  moral  life  and  destiny  by  a  revolu- 
tion at  the  innermost.  For  that  salvation  of  ours  comes 
to  us  in  the  salvation  of  a  world,  and  not  of  our  own 
soul  single  and  alone.  The  same  Act  saves  both.  We 
do  not  find  our  freedom  and  peace  merely  by  finding 
ourselves,  but  by  finding  ourselves  in  a  world  Saviour. 
We  do  not  reach  rest  merely  by  finding  our  place  in  an 
objective  order,  and  reconciling  ourselves  to  it.  For  that 
is  rather  resignation  than  reconciliation.  What  we  find  is 
a  power  rather  than  a  place,  a  power  working  congenially 
in  us  both  to  will  and  to  do.  We  do  not  merely  win  a 
fortitude  which  accepts  our  niche  in  the  universe,  or  takes 
the  room  assigned  in  the  caravanserai  of  life.  We  recog- 
nise, especially  in  the  social  law,  and  most  especially  in 
the  society  of  the  Church,  our  own  Master's  voice,  the 
voice  of  One  whose  mastery  of  us  is  our  own  true  self, 
true  power,  and  true  freedom.  Qui  amavit  novit  quid  haec 
vox  clamat. 

Moral  power  is,  at  the  last,  personaHty.  That  is  the 
only  form  in  which  we  know  what  power  really  is — our 
own  sense  of  acting  as  persons,  or  of  being  acted  on  by 
persons.  There  is  no  possibility  of  translating  v6fJbo<;  to 
TeXo9,  law  into  destiny,  pressure  into  promise,  order  into 
perfection,  except  by  a  reXo^  or  goal  whose  personaHty 
is  the  immanent  ground  of  the  vo/io^.  It  is  as  a  person 
that  the  end  works  within  the  course,  and  '  arrives.'  It 
is  by  the  ultimacy,  within  the  course,  of  a  Will  absolute 
and  holy,  forming  the  ground  and  measure  of  every 
relative  stage.  Is  there  any  other  category  but  that  of 
creative  personality  which  makes  it  possible  to  conceive 
of  the  end  already  present  and  active  in  the  means,  and 
realising  itself  there  ?  The  moral  order  is  self-repairing 
only  in  the  sense  that  it  is  repaired  continuously  and 
creatively  by  the  Holy  One  whose  end  is  in  Himself,  and 
who  is  its  true  self  and  more.     (So  that  to  love  God  is  to 


m.]  METAPHYSIC  AND  REDEMPTION  63 

love  ourselves  in  the  truest  way.)  That  the  continuity  and 
stability  of  the  whole  moral  order  is  really  the  unity  of 
a  holy  Person  on  that  scale  is  the  historic  witness  of  the 
best  and  holiest  of  the  race.  And  it  is  a  serious  thing 
to  differ  with  the  saints.  Moreover  the  transcendent 
ground,  immanent  and  emerging  in  all  things,  passes,  at 
its  summit  in  Humanity,  into  the  ethic  of  personal  relations. 
How  then  can  it  be  other  than  personal  ?  How  can  it 
be  thus  ethical  in  its  results  if  it  is  not  ethical  in  its  nature — 
ethical,  that  is,  in  the  sense  of  being  a  personal  act  of  a 
holy  kind,  and  not  only  a  movement  of  tendency  to  a 
harmony  of  parts  in  a  utilitarian  way.  It  must  be  moved 
by  a  moral  act,  by  the  act  of  a  person  on  that  scale,  and 
not  by  a  non-moral  process,  if  it  is  to  have  really  moral 
effect. 

So,  if  we  end  with  the  question  with  which  we  began 
as  to  the  self-recuperative  power  of  the  moral  order,  we 
have  found  in  answer  that  physical  analogies  are  not 
enough.  For  they  are  all  limited.  There  comes  a  point 
when  the  power  of  physical  self-repair  ceases — in  death. 
So  that  only  our  own  experience  in  that  moral  order  can 
be  a  guide  to  us.  No  analogy,  no  outer  observation  can. 
But  such  experience  is  more  than  introspection.  It 
becomes  a  matter  of  history.  It  means  not  sinking  into 
ourselves,  but  scrutinising  the  facts  of  history,  i.e.  the 
personalities  with  the  relevant  and  classic  experience. 
For  the  greatest  matters  it  is  more  fruitful  to  interrogate 
the  classic  souls  than  to  circularise  the  average  man. 
These  souls  form  the  locus  of  authority  about  the  ultimate 
action  and  resource  in  the  moral  order.  But  then  as  a 
fact  the  weightier  part  of  the  human  history  they  inhabit 
and  interpret  has  transpired  under  the  faith,  not  simply 
of  a  redemptive  process,  but  of  a  holy,  personal  Redeemer. 
It  has  been  lived  out  as  the  action  of  that  Holy  One 
replacing  (so  far  as  that  is  morally  possible)  the  action 
proper  to  the  soul  concerned.     We  all  inherit  the  legacy 


64  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

of  such  an  ethos.  It  is  impossible  now  for  us  to  get  at 
any  experience  relevant  to  our  question  from  which  that 
historic  action  is  erased.  We  cannot  go  back  upon 
history,  cast  off  all  that  Christian  faith  has  made  us,  and 
examine  a  moral  order  per  se,  drained  of  the  action  of 
Christian  Redemption.  The  result  would  be  a  mere 
abstraction.  And  to  explain  the  Christian  Redemption 
as  itself  the  classic  case  of  a  self -recuperative  moral  order 
is  to  beg  the  question.  Where  is  the  moral  order  found 
whose  independent  scrutiny  yields  the  critical  principle 
for  the  interpretation  of  Christianity  ? 

A  tendency  to  self-recuperation  we  nmy  find  in  such 
order  or  process  as  we  can  reach  in  nature  apart  from 
Redemption,  but  not  a  power,  a  certainty,  a  finality. 
We  may  see  that  there  is  in  evil  an  immanent  dialectic  by 
which  it  disorganises  itself  as  evil,  that  it  is  a  self-solvent, 
that  wickedness  tends  to  destroy  the  personality  that 
works  wickedness,  that  the  bad  are  caught  in  their  own 
net,  and  even  that  they  are  made  to  work  out  a  good 
they  never  meant,  and  on  the  whole  do  what  they  strove 
to  imdo.  But  that  perception,  even  when  taken  together 
with  certain  signs  of  amelioration,  is  not  the  same  as 
the  final  certainty  of  the  establishment  of  good  in  com- 
mand of  the  world.  We  can  have  that  only  in  the  Holy 
One,  and  in  His  self-revelation  in  supreme  action  as  the 
Redeemer  of  the  history  in  which  He  appears. 

Be  it  remembered  that  we  are  not  dealing  with  a  mere 
elan,  nor  a  mere  nisus  in  a  certain  direction.  The  action 
of  the  moral  upon  us  is  not  a  case  of  pressure  but  of 
imperative.  It  is  not  the  flush  and  tide  of  a  universal 
wave,  making  its  slow  and  ebbless  way  through  creation, 
with  power  to  hold  what  it  covers.  It  does  not  act  by 
force  but  by  authority.  It  is  the  Whole  acting,  not  by 
virtue  of  its  mass  or  energy,  but  by  its  right.  When 
the  moral  acts  with  universal  and  absolute  right,  it  is 
the   Holy.     And,   when   it  is   resisted,   the   resistance  is 


m.]  METAPHYSIC  AND  REDEMPTION  65 

not  simply  to  be  overborne  and  erased  ;  it  must  be  con- 
verted and  recovered,  else  the  Holy  is  less  than  universal, 
infinite,  and  absolute.  The  unholy  must  be  restored  to 
holiness.  It  is  unmade  but  to  be  remade.  And  there  is 
none  but  the  Holy  creative  enough  to  do  this.  And  He 
must — ^by  the  necessity  of  His  holiness.  The  same  Holy 
who  is  imperative  as  law  is  also  creative  as  life  ;  He  is 
creative  and  restorative  by  a  necessity  moral  and  not 
physical,  of  impulse  and  not  pressure.  The  power  that 
condemns  is  the  only  one  that  can  reclaim.  He  even 
atones.  As  holy  He  deals  with  His  broken  law  in  the 
Act  which  heals  the  broken  soul.  The  Holy  One  is  the 
atoning  Redeemer.  And  the  source  of  our  moral  fear  is 
the  goal  of  our  holy  love. 

No  evolutionary  process,  therefore,  can  deal  justly  with 
the  moral  situation  of  the  race  but  only  a  holy  and  re- 
demptive. And  its  redemptive  treatment  is  no  mere 
process  but  a  moral  Act.  It  is  the  supreme  case  of  that 
which  marks  moral  action  with  its  fresh  initiative  and 
new  contribution — ^it  is  creative.  If  any  man  come  to 
be  in  Christ  it  is  a  new  creation.  But  that  means  that  it 
is  the  Act  of  One  who,  being  Himself  holy  and  having 
His  end  always  in  Himself,  makes  the  whole  end  the 
very  nature  of  His  world's  beginning,  and  sets  its  whole 
destiny  working  at  the  root  of  its  origin.  The  new  and 
final  Humanity  lies  in  the  Act  of  its  holy  Redeemer ; 
which  Act  is  our  light,  clue,  and  cause  through  all  the 
steps  of  the  process  through  which  it  comes  to  be.  That 
Act  is  an  absolutely  new  beginning  of  the  race,  a  second 
creation.  And  all  the  horrors  of  history  in  the  first 
creation  and  its  wars  are  parallel  to  the  chaos  (itself 
not  without  God)  from  which  the  first  creation  rose. 
But,  since  the  new  creation  is  much  greater  than  the  first, 
so  the  ferment  caused  in  the  social  chaos  by  its  gestation 
is  greater  and  more  terrible  than  anything  we  find  on 
the  level  of  the  first.     War  is  a  far  more  dreadful  thing 


66  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [CH. 

than  any  ravage  in  the  lower  stages  of  nature.  The 
collision  of  the  Holy  with  the  wickedness  of  man  is  more 
grave  than  the  conflict  of  the  Almighty  with  crude  matter, 
or  even  crude  mind.  Redemption  is  a  far  more  tragic 
thing  than  evolution  and  its  struggles.  The  new  creation 
must,  of  course,  arise  out  of  the  first,  for,  though  it  is  an 
absolute  Act,  it  does  not  take  place  in  an  absolute  way. 
But  it  is  a  more  grave  matter  to  regenerate  the  first 
creation  into  the  second  than  it  was  to  organise  chaos 
into  the  first.  The  opposition  of  chaos,  void  and  form- 
less, was  passive,  but  the  opposition  of  the  creature  is 
active.  It  is  a  family  quarrel,  and  they  are  the  worst.  It 
is  not  matter  against  force  but  will  against  will.  It  has 
behind  it  all  the  power  of  the  freedom  which  makes  the 
first  creation  what  it  chiefly  is.  So  that  it  is  really  more 
true  ethically  to  speak  of  God's  goal  as  a  New  Humanity 
than  as  two  stages  oi  states  of  the  old  Humanity — so 
long  as  we  do  not  put  the  old  and  the  new  out  of  all 
organic  connection  whatever.  It  is  no  mere  process  that 
turns  a  child  of  nature  into  a  son  of  man  ;  far  less  is  it 
such  that  turns  a  son  of  man  into  a  Man  of  God.  The 
Redeemer  was  not  the  mere  agent  of  a  process.  He 
was  the  New  Creator.  He  gave  the  race  not  only  an 
impetus  but  a  destiny.  He  is  its  destiny.  It  must  stand 
at  His  judgment-seat.  His  salvation  is  its  final  teleology, 
its  deep  entelechy.  And  it  is,  in  the  atoning  manner  of 
it,  the  one  theodicy,  the  vindication  of  God's  justice  in 
the  process  as  well  as  of  His  glory  in  the  goal. 


IV.]  WHAT  IS  REDEMPTION  t  67 


CHAPTER  IV 

WHAT  IS  REDEMPTION? 

In  one  more  chapter  I  venture  to  continue  the  answer 
to  that  question,  and  now  from  the  more  religious  side. 

Nothing  offers  a  future  for  such  a  world  as  this  but 
its  redemption.  But  by  redemption  what  do  we  mean  ? 
We  mean  that  the  last  things  shall  crown  the  first  things, 
and  that  the  end  will  justify  the  means,  and  the  goal 
glorify  a  Holy  God.  We  mean  (if  we  allow  ourselves 
theological  language)  an  eschatology  and  a  theodicy  in  it — 
a  divine  Heaven,  a  divine  Salvation,  and  a  divine  Vindica- 
tion in  the  result  of  history.  But  more.  We  mean  a  con- 
summation which  can  only  come  by  way  of  rescue  and  not 
mere  growth.  We  mean  rescue  from  evil  by  a  God  whose 
manner  of  it  is  moral,  which  is  the  act  of  a  moral  absolute, 
the  act  of  a  holy  God  doing  justice  to  righteousness  at  any 
cost  to  Himself.  We  mean  rectification  of  the  present  state 
of  things  on  His  own  principles  ;  that  is,  not  mere  rectifi- 
cation, mere  straightening  of  a  tangle,  but  justification  on 
a  transcendent  plane  of  righteousness,  the  moral  adjust- 
ment of  man  and  God  in  one  holy,  loving,  mighty,  final, 
and  eternal  act.  We  certainly  mean  something  more 
crucial  than  Meliorism. 

Religion  tends  more  and  more,  as  we  realise  the  state  of 
things  both  by  a  larger  knowledge  and  a  finer  sympathy,  to 
centre  on  this  matter  of  redemption.  But  how  shall  it  be 
construed  ?  Even  philosophy  now  becomes  redemptive — 
thanks  largely  to  the  deepening,  the  pointing,  and  the 


68  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

humanising  of  the  Hegelian  reconciliation  by  the  pessimists. 
Philosophy  cannot  avoid  considering  the  last  things,  and 
framing  a  doctrine  of  them.  It  answers  their  problem  by 
its  doctrine  of  the  absolute,  which  corresponds  to  the 
theological  doctrine  of  the  holy.  Both  philosophy  and 
theology  agree  on  the  existence  of  this  ultimate  power,  and 
its  exercise,  either  as  mere  pressure  or  as  moral  action,  in 
subduing  the  atomic,  chaotic,  and  discordant  state  of 
things.  The  question  is,  will  it  succeed  ?  Both  religion 
and  thought  agree  in  the  main  that  it  will.  But  pessimism 
stands  out.  Serious  and  thorough  pessimism  alone  dis- 
sents, holding  that  war  is  normal  existence  (if  that  be  not  a 
contradiction  in  terms,  since  war  destroys  all  norms)  and 
strife  is  fundamental  to  all  things.  This  we  may  leave 
aside  for  the  present,  only  noting  how  well  Germany  has 
learned  from  such  teachers.  We  may  agree  that  the 
absolute  and  holy  will  rule  and  round  all,  and  we  may  go  on 
to  take  note  of  the  two  very  different  forms  this  faith  takes. 
They  turn  on  different  views  of  the  nature  of  this  ever 
active  and  decisive  power.  For  one  it  is  immanent  and 
pantheistic,  for  the  other  transcendental  and  personal. 
For  the  one  tendency  it  means  the  presence  and  emergence 
in  all  things  of  the  timeless  and  absolute  Being,  for  the  other 
the  invasive  action  in  all  things  of  an  influence  akin  less 
to  thought  than  to  will  in  creating  and  freedom  in  becoming. 
For  the  one  the  absolute  and  almighty  inheres  in  the  end- 
less play  of  relative  and  fleeting  things,  and  it  forms  their 
unity  ;  they  cohere  in  it ;  so  that  reHgion  is  the  sense  of 
the  totality  of  all  these  relations  breaking  into  light  or 
flame.  The  absolute  has  such  incandescent  points,  in 
which  the  finite  knows  that  it  is  subdued  and  lost  in  the 
infinite.  But  an  experience  of  this  kind  is  not  elevation 
to  a  new  state  of  life  and  fine  of  action  :  it  is  the  suffusion 
of  the  soul,  amid  its  natural  chaos  of  impulse  and  mood, 
by  a  sense  (first  quick,  then  drowsy)  of  unity,  harmony, 
and  calm  in  the  grand  etre.     For  the  other  view,  however, 


IV.]  WHAT  IS  REDEMPTION  ?  69 

the  sense  of  the  absolute  or  holy  comes  by  the  way  of  will 
and  freedom  rather  than  of  imaginative  thought.  It 
brings  less  calm  than  confidence.  It  comes  by  the  action 
of  a  freedom  which  can  only  exist  as  detached  from  the 
imiversal  bond  and  released  from  the  mere  process  of  things, 
nay,  as  rounding  and  reacting  upon  them.  The  soul  has  to 
face  the  moral  problem  of  growing  surrender  to  the  holy 
by  effort,  concentration,  and  obedience  towards  the  select- 
ing and  creating  Source.  The  great  power  is  felt  as  moving 
in  real  action  and  not  a  stream  of  process.  It  lifts  us,  it 
does  not  merely  bear  us  along.  It  gives  us  the  very  power 
to  face,  and  even  challenge  it.  It  would  have  us  stand  up 
to  it  before  we  bow  do^vn.  It  lifts  us  at  last  to  a  living 
and  humble  miion  with  itself,  by  the  exercise  of  will  and 
freedom  on  both  sides.  So  that,  while  in  the  one  system 
we  have  a  new  view  of  existence  and  its  movement,  new 
interpretation,  in  the  other  we  have  new  life  power,  a 
new  and  living  state  of  the  soul,  new  vitality  ;  and  we 
have  it  by  a  free  act  of  ours  which  places  us,  heart  and 
conscience,  in  personal,  living  and  congenial  unity  with 
the  Holy  in  His  Act.  The  one  view  thinks  of  a  totality 
existing  as  a  universe,  the  other  of  a  holiness  acting  as 
creative,  and  of  an  evolution  which  works  creatively, 
i.e.  by  way  of  a  contributing  freedom  instead  of  an  over- 
riding process.  One  tends  to  pantheistic  mysticism,  with 
the  whole  at  each  point,  the  other  to  faith  in  a  personalist 
creation,  with  its  goal  at  the  close — except  in  so  far  as  it  is 
always  in  the  Creator  whom  we  meet  at  each  point. 

Observe  that  it  is  a  redemption  either  way.  In  the  one 
case  it  is  a  redemption  from  the  atom  to  the  all,  from  the 
fractional  to  the  whole,  from  the  fleeting  to  the  firm,  from 
the  unreal  to  the  real.  In  the  other  case  it  is  a  release  from 
law  to  liberty,  from  self  to  sacrifice,  from  the  imperfect  to 
the  perfect,  from  the  crude  to  the  complete,  from  strife 
not  to  peace  only  but  to  victory,  from  sin  to  righteousness. 
On  the  one  line  we  tend  to  pantheism  for  a  philosophy,  and 


70  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

to  Buddhism  for  a  religion ;    on  the  other  we  move  to 
voluntaryism,  Judaism,  and  Christianity. 

Now  it  is  quite  true  that  neither  of  these  is  without  some 
influence  on  the  other,  and  useful  influence.  But  in  the 
long  run  a  choice  must  be  made.  And  it  is  not  a  specu- 
lative choice  but  a  practical.  That  is  to  say,  it  involves 
the  disposal  of  ourselves,  and  not  simply  the  selection  of  a 
theory.  It  is  moral  and  religious.  We  have  to  ask  which 
of  the  two  forms  of  redemption  really  deserves  the  name, 
which  sets  us  really  free,  which  makes  more  for  religious 
energy  and  moral  effect.  Is  it  that  there  is  one  line  on 
which  we  lose  the  soul,  and  one  on  which  we  find  it  ?  Does 
one  make  more  than  the  other  for  the  holy,  and  give  it 
freer  course  with  us  ?  Few  can  doubt  that  in  this  respect 
the  difference  is  vast ;  nor  will  most  people  doubt  that  for 
moral  life  we  must  choose  the  second.  To  go  to  what  is 
most  painfully  and  crucially  under  our  eyes — Germany  as  a 
whole  has  chosen  the  former,  and  it  has  cost  her  her  soul, 
her  moral  soul.  As  a  people  she  knows  everything  of 
culture  and  nothing  of  salvation,  of  redemption  nothing. 
She  has  come  to  worship  wholes  instead  of  respecting  souls  ; 
and  the  whole  she  worships  is  not  Humanity  but  an  egoist 
whole,  and  especially  in  the  form  of  the  State.  As  a  conse- 
quence she  has  thrown  overboard  public  morality  in  the 
name  and  idolatry  of  sheer  power.  The  State  is  the  moral 
authority.  She  has  expressly  claimed  for  the  powerful 
State  the  right  to  decide  when  moral  control  ends  and 
succumbs  to  egoist  interests.  That  is,  the  nation  relapses 
to  the  worship  of  Wo  tan  and  the  cult  of  Loki,  and  confesses 
its  real  God  to  be  nature  force  and  process,  the  ancient 
prince  of  hell  in  mail  of  craft  and  power.  And  this  has 
brought  her  to  the  passion  of  world  empire,  merciless  skill, 
and  war  upon  Humanity.  She  has  lost  the  sense  and  the 
value  of  the  individual,  both  his  liberty  and  his  responsi- 
bility. She  has  overridden  conscience  by  the  State,  and 
left  it  for  dead.     The  people  are  pawns  in  the  war-game. 


IV.]  WHAT  IS  REDEMPTION  T  71 

The  man  is  merged  in  the  soldier.  And  his  warfare  is  with 
the  Kingdom  of  God — whereof  the  AlHes  are  ad  hoc  the 
undeserving  pillars. 

So,  if  we  care  supremely  for  the  moral  soul  and  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  it  is  the  second  of  these  two  forms  of 
redemption  we  must  take.  It  is  the  more  personal  view, 
which  lays  the  stress  on  choice  rather  than  thought,  on 
crisis  rather  than  order,  on  free  will  rather  than  fated  force, 
on  constant  creation  rather  than  perpetual  process,  on  a 
first  free  creation  which  commits  us,  for  our  perfecting,  to  a 
second  freer  still. 

But  even  apart  from  moral  results,  the  pantheistic 
doctrine  has  but  a  spurious  appearance  of  unity,  if  we 
criticise  it  on  philosophic  grounds  alone.  Its  apparent 
unity  is  an  importation  :  it  is  not  a  discovery.  We  bring 
it  with  us,  we  do  not  find  it  there.  ^'Miat  we  find  is  a  mass 
of  relations.  And  what  seems  more  is  really  something 
we  carry  to  that  mass,  and  read  into  it.  We  make  an 
illicit,  though  unconscious,  contribution  of  the  unity  of  our 
own  personality,  the  unifjdng  order  of  thought  insepar- 
able from  personality.  We  transfer  the  sense  of  our  own 
unity  and  reality  to  the  world,  and  thus  we  hypos tatise  the 
category  of  relationship  in  the  mass  of  things,  instead  of 
discovering  an  absolute  which  transcends  and  holds  it. 

But,  if  there  is  to  be  any  importation,  let  us  be  thorough. 
If  we  ourselves  are  items  of  an  inter-related  universe,  the 
unifying  contribution  must  be  to  us  rather  than  by  us. 
Let  us  go  through  with  this  matter  of  contribution,  and 
rise  to  the  thought  of  creation.  The  contribution  to  us  is 
everything.  It  is  existence,  and  all  that  enriches  existence. 
It  is  creation.  The  one  contributor  to  the  universe,  the 
Creditor  that  buys  out  all  the  rest  is  its  Creator.  This 
makes  a  moral  relation  possible,  first,  between  the  world 
and  its  source,  its  absolute,  and,  second,  between  its  items. 
This  makes  freedom,  and  makes  for  freedom.     It  gives  us 


72  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

that  power,  and  it  develops  the  gift.  This  is  the  great  mys- 
ticism— that  of  conscience  blent  with  conscience.  Being 
with  being  might  mingle,  but  will  with  will  ! — what  will 
overcome  hate  ?  The  weakness  of  the  mysticism  which  is 
more  imaginative  than  moral,  and  more  inward  than 
historic,  is  that  it  tends  away  from  the  idea  of  creation 
to  '  eternal  process  moving  on,'  and  to  the  absorption 
of  our  freedom  and  responsibility  in  that  infinite  stream. 
It  does  not  create,  therefore  it  does  not  really  renew. 
It  only  swells.  It  does  not  add  the  new  thing,  which 
will  or  freedom  alone  does.  It  only  puts  things  in  a 
certain  fresh  or  seemly  light,  without  warm  power.  Mere 
process  cannot  be  self-fed.  Suns  bum  out.  It  does 
not  save  :  it  only  develops  a  vaster  and  more  complex 
mass,  waiting  and  groaning  to  be  saved.  It  presents  an 
idea  of  unity  which  has  nothing  in  it  to  withstand  the 
constant  drop  in  temperature  to  a  freezing  equality  every- 
where. It  is  light  without  power — an  auroral  light  and 
not  a  solar.  It  may  quell  troublesome  desire,  and  police 
spontaneity  {more  teutonico),  but  it  does  not  bring  new  life. 
But  the  relativism,  the  imperfection,  the  anomahes,  the 
tragedies  can  only  be  lost  in  an  Absolute  which  is  real  to 
life,  passion,  and  personality  ;  they  can  only  be  made  good 
in  a  moral  Absolute,  in  the  active  revelation  of  the  Holy 
One,  and  the  Apocalypse  of  the  Son  of  God.  We  must 
arrive,  either  by  our  faith,  or  our  thought,  or  by  both,  at 
an  Absolute  very  different  from  a  mere  sum  of  relations 
hypostatised.  We  must  have  one  with  initiative,  one 
creative,  a  living  and  holy  Will  ;  which,  having  made  the 
soul,  alone  knows  the  secret  of  the  lock,  and  can  enter  it, 
and  sit  down  with  it,  and  sup,  and  rear  it  to  a  new  creature 
through  communion  bestowed  or  restored.  The  com- 
munion itself  rises,  in  a  sublimation,  to  an  ever  closer  union 
of  will  and  will,  and  so  to  perfection.  And  this  applies  not  to 
single  souls  only  but,  by  the  same  divine  principle  and  Act, 
to  the  soul  and  life  of  Humanity.    But,  for  man's  historic 


IV.]  WHAT  IS  REDEMPTION  ?  73 

and  evil  life,  for  the  life  of  the  race,  this  means  redemption 
by  something  else  than  a  diffused  process — by  a  concentrated 
Act,  with  an  eternal  and  universal  bearing.  For  an  act 
must  be  at  a  centre,  even  if  it  be  qualitatively  an  infinite 
centre,  as  man  is  in  the  universe.  Activity  only  diffused 
or  processional  is  but  movement,  it  is  not  action  ;  it  is  not 
of  will,  it  has  no  centre  and  no  moral  value.  The  redemp- 
tion, therefore,  of  a  race  with  a  conscience  and  a  history 
means  a  historic  Act  of  redemption  on  the  part  of  the  Holy, 
controlling  the  whole  of  the  race's  career,  and  in  command 
of  all  the  cataclysms  and  tragedies  that  seem  at  times  to 
eclipse  its  sun.  His  loving-kindness  breaks  through  every 
midnight  of  the  soul.  And  this  Act  assures  the  perfecting, 
both  of  the  race  and  of  its  units  and  of  each  through  the 
other,  in  a  reciprocity  founded  in  that  of  Creator  and 
creature.  Redeemer  and  saint — perhaps  even  Father  and 
Son.  It  means  the  glory,  honour,  and  immortaUty  of  the 
one  in  the  other,  by  an  Act  whose  nature  is  moral  to  the 
pitch  of  a  holiness  that  destroys  all  sin  and  guilt  by  the 
omnipotence  of  righteousness. 

This  great,  and  righteous,  and  blessed  goal  then — what 
is  it  ?  We  speak  of  the  end  of  the  world.  But  (it  has 
been  said)  in  any  great  sense  of  the  word  world,  it  can 
have  no  end.  Our  deeper  views  of  creation,  and  of  the 
relation  of  the  creature  to  the  Creator,  do  not  allow  us 
to  think  of  the  universe  as  an  external  and  mechanical 
product  of  His,  which  He  could  destroy  and  make  an- 
other. The  existence  of  the  universe  is  too  closely 
bound  up  ^vith  the  being  of  God  for  that.  Its  life  is  the 
immanence  of  the  Transcendent.  It  does  not  emerge  into 
Eternity,  which  is  not  simply  a  beyond.  The  infinite 
is  the  content  of  a  finite  which  holds  of  the  Eternal. 
The  world  belongs  to  God  in  a  deeper  sense  than  being 
His  property.  The  body  is  not  but  the  property  of  the 
soul.     The  world  holds  of  God.     It  cannot  therefore  have 


74  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

an  end,  as  it  had  no  beginning,  in  the  popular  sense  of 
the  words  ;  it  has  a  consummation.  The  universe  is  not 
a  mere  phase  of  the  Infinite  which  passes  Hke  a  vapour.  It 
is  not  a  mere  parenthesis  otiose  to  an  eternal  context.  It  is 
not  a  mere  scaffolding,  not  a  mere  collapsible  tent.  We 
cannot  strictly  speak  of  the  end  of  the  world  ;  we  can  only 
speak  of  the  end  of  certain  worlds  within  the  world.  Star- 
dust is  still  a  constituent  of  the  world.  Extinct  suns  still 
have  a  place  in  systems.  And  extinct  systems  may  mean 
a  re-adjustment  of  the  balance  of  power  in  space,  but  they 
need  not  mean  the  winding-up  of  the  universe. 

When  we  do  speak  of  the  end  of  the  world,  we  really 
mean  the  end  of  man.  And,  if  there  be  a  redemption  at  all, 
that  end  is  neither  in  dust  nor  fire.  The  end  of  Humanity 
can  but  mean  the  return  of  man  to  Godi,  in  free  worship, 
humble  service,  and  intelligent  communion.  It  means  the 
consummation  of  the  souls  that  began  as  His  natural 
creatures  and  end  as  redeemed  sons.  For  spiritual  per- 
sonaHty  is  a  growth  through  the  creative  discipline  of  life, 
and  especially  through  its  tragedies.  The  supreme  tragedy 
becomes,  in  the  Cross  of  Christ,  the  vehicle  of  the  eternal 
Redemption,  and  the  Source  of  the  New  Creation.  Man's 
end  is  not  dissolution  but  Eternity,  an  active  communion 
in  the  Life  divine.  A  commmiion  it  is,  and  no  mere 
immersion.  It  is  not  mere  fusion  in  the  Divine,  which, 
for  a  being  like  man,  would  be  extinction.  And  no  mere 
•endless  existence  could  be  a  true  end  for  man.  It  could 
be  no  consummation.  Immortality  is  much  more  than 
just  going  on.  Were  it  not  more  it  would  be  the  burden 
of  Tithonus.  Eternity  is  not  duration.  The  true  end  is 
the  completion  of  that  schooling  of  soul,  will,  and  person 
which  earthly  life  divinely  means,  and  which  for  God's 
side  is  constant  new  creation  and  its  joy.  It  is  perfect 
and  active  union  with  God's  active  Will,  the  barter  of  its 
love,  and  its  secure  intercommunion.  It  is  the  surrender 
to  God,  not  of  our  personality,  not  of  our  existence  as  per- 


IV.]  WHAT  IS  REDEMPTION  ?  75 

sons,  but  of  our  person,  of  our  egoism  as  persons  ;  for  the 
living  God  is  God  of  the  hving  not  of  the  dead.  It  is  a 
kingdom  of  souls  as  ends  that  reaHse  themselves,  though 
only  in  the  gift  of  the  Spirit,  which  descends  upon  us 
rather  than  mounts  through  us.  We  face  here  a  great 
paradox.  B}^  grace  it  is  given  souls  to  have  life  in  themselves. 
The  great  end,  therefore,  is  not  even  an  immortality  senti- 
mentalised— a  metaphysical,  rational,  and  credible  im- 
mortaUty  sentimentalised  ;  but  it  is  a  moral  realm  of 
persons  made  perfect  on  a  universal  and  eternal  scale  by 
the  gift  of  a  holy  God.  It  is  the  self-realisation  of  the 
Holy.  It  is  the  Divine  Commedia  on  the  scale  of  all  exist- 
ence. To  the  whole  of  Humanity,  with  faith  and  hope 
ecHpsed  by  world  catastrophe,  the  infinite  and  most  merci- 
ful Majesty  yet  says,  '  Fear  not,  little  flock,  it  is  the  Father's 
good  pleasure  to  give  you  the  Kingdom.'  And,  '  Si  quis 
amavit  novit  quid  haec  vox  clamat.'* 

The  chief  cause  of  our  being  unhinged  by  catastrophe  is 
twofold.  First,  that  we  have  drawn  our  faith  from  the 
order  of  the  world  instead  of  its  crisis,  from  the  integrity 
of  the  moral  order  rather  than  from  the  tragedy  of  its 
recovery  in  the  Cross.  And,  even  if  we  start  there,  the 
second  error  is  that  we  have  been  more  engrossed  with  the 
ill  we  are  saved  from  than  with  Him  who  saves  us,  and  the 
I^ngdom  for  which  we  are  saved.  We  are  more  taken  up 
with  the  wrongs  so  many  men  have  to  bear  than  with  the 
wrong  God  has  to  b^ar  from  us  all — God  who  yet  atones 
and  redeems  in  giving  us  a  Kingdom  which  is  always  His 
in  reality  and  ours  in  reversion.  It  is  not  as  if  God  first 
redeemed,  and,  having  thus  prepared  the  ground,  brought 
in  the  Kingdom  ;  but  He  redeemed  us  by  bringing  in  the 
Kingdom,  and  setting  it  up  in  eternal  righteousness  and 
Eternal  Life.  The  Cross  of  Christ  is  not  the  preliminary  of 
the  Kingdom  ;  it  is  the  Kingdom  breaking  in.  It  is  not 
the  clearing  of  the  site  for  the  heavenly  city  ;  it  is  the  city 
itself  descending  out  of  heaven  from  God. 


76  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 


CHAPTER  V 

SALVATION  THEOLOGICAL  BUT  NOT  SYSTEMATIC 

A  MOBAL  salvation,  the  final  and  foregone  conquest  of 
guilt  by  judging  Grace  and  searching  Love,  is  our  only 
warrant  in  extremis  for  believing  in  the  radical  order 
and  final  purpose  of  the  world.  But  such  a  salvation 
presents  not  only  the  ground  but  also  the  contours  of 
that  belief.  It  is  a  fides  formatu.  It  is  more  than 
very  sanguine.  For  I  have  already  suggested  that  a 
theodicy  must  rest  on  a  theology,  and  an  evangelical 
theology  ;  and  this  must  be  emphasised.  Being  Christians 
we  believe  in  the  world  as  saved,  and  not  merely  as 
settled,  and  in  human  nature  as  redeemed  and  not  as 
excellent,  as  regenerated  and  not  merely  as  educated.  We 
believe  that  all  is  well,  even  if  all  goes  not  well.  "What 
we  are  perfectly  sure  about  is  something  fundamental  and 
eternal — Grod's  saving  relation  to  man,  and  man's  saved 
relation  to  God.  It  is  a  saved  relation,  it  is  not  merely  a 
filial ;  nor  are  we  but  fostered  into  Eternal  Life.  The 
greater  our  need,  the  greater  His  deed  ;  Lazams  dead 
brought  Him  as  He  never  came  before.  Our  worst  need 
casts  us  entirely  outside  our  own  resources.  All  is  well 
with  the  world,  since  its  Saviour  has  it  finally  and  fully  in 
hand.  Victory  awaits  us  because  the  victory  is  won.  Our 
victory  is  the  world's  destiny,  because  it  is  already  God's 
gift.  I  feel,  of  course,  that  these  statements  rest  on  a 
theological  groundwork  for  which  there  is  here  no  space. 
We  are  more  than  conquerors  through  Him  that  loved  us  ; 


v.]    SALVATION  THEOLOGICAL  BUT  NOT  SYSTEMATIC  77 

^ve  are  redeemed.  We  are  beloved  into  a  destiny  we  never 
achieved,  and  could  never  love  ourselves  into.  The  root 
of  the  moral  matter,  when  we  rise  to  this  region  where  all 
earth's  ethic  and  history  draw  to  a  solemn  head,  is  not 
that  we  love,  but  that  we  are  beloved — beloved  by  the  Holy, 
beloved,  therefore,  into  righteousness.  It  is  not  that  we 
love,  but  that  we  trust  such  righteous  Love,  not  that  we 
sacrifice,  but  that  we  trust  the  Cross.  All  our  divine  know- 
ledge springs  from  being  known,  and  being  loved  even 
better  even  than  we  are  known.  Herein  is  Love — not  that 
we  loved,  but  that  He  did.  If  He  did  not,  if  we  cannot  be 
sure  He  did,  we  can  have  no  teleology  of  the  world.  No 
human  hate  can  thwart  God's  Kingdom  so  long  as  His 
holy  Love  holds  ;  which  cannot  fail,  for  it  is  His  Omnipo- 
tence. Only  He  must  be  allowed  His  own  way  of  showing 
it,  and  giving  it  effect.  About  the  strategy  of  that  He 
mostly  keeps  His  own  counsel.  Love  He  has  given  us, 
and  faith,  with  Himself  to  love,  trust,  and  obey.  What 
He  has  not  given  us  is  a  scheme  of  rational  optimism,  or  a 
visible  process  of  good,  dawning  and  spreading  to  its 
perfect  day.  He  has  given  us  no  programme  of  happy 
things.  The  totality  of  the  world,  its  wholeness  and  unity 
in  Him,  consists  not  in  its  being  a  system,  but  in  its  having 
a  meaning,  and  in  meaning  Him.  Yet  these  designs  which 
we  do  not  find  are  the  things  we  expect  when  we  start 
from  the  hopes  of  nature  instead  of  the  faith  of  Grace. 
The  Church  itself  is  ruled  by  this  i)agan  dream.  It  offers 
a  God  consecrating  nature's  initial  instinct  "with  His  bene- 
diction, as  a  marriage  service  might ;  and  then  it  stands 
by  with  the  Cross  to  console  or  stay  us  when  the  scheme 
fails  and  the  hopes  come  to  grief.  But  that  is  not  the 
method  of  God's  Revelation  in  the  Cross.  It  does  not  come 
in  to  grout  the  gaps  in  nature,  not  simply  to  bless  nature, 
but  to  change  it,  to  make  a  new  earth  from  a  foundation 
in  a  new  heaven — from  a  new  exercise  of  God's  divinest 
power,  that  of  creating.     We  are  apt  to  look — our  cultured 


78  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

Christianity  especially  looks — for  a  world  of  symmetry 
rather  than  a  world  of  reconciliation,  for  a  world  complete 
in  a  harmony  of  parts  instead  of  perfect  in  a  reconciliation 
of  persons.  We  even  think  the  Christian  aspiration  is  to 
aim  at  harmony  with  the  character  of  Jesus  instead  of 
reconciliation  through  Him  with  the  holiness  of  Grod. 
Sometimes,  if  we  try  to  enter  such  reconciliation,  it  is  with 
the  feeling,  more  or  less  latent,  that  it  is  a  preliminary  or  a 
surrogate.  We  think  that  it  is  a  means  or  a  proxy  for 
something  which  will  be  really  more  satisfactory,  but  which 
is  deferred,  namely,  the  vision  of  a  universe  thoroughly 
co-ordinated  and  lubricated,  with  a  place  found  at  last  for 
the  pieces  of  the  puzzle  which  were  quite  refractory  before. 
That  we  think  would  be  heaven — the  whole  business  of 
goodness  completely  organised.  We  lay  more  stress  on 
structure,  machinery,  swing,  and  amenity  than  on  pur- 
pose, worth,  and  costly  righteousness,  in  our  world  of 
things.  We  want  to  see  all  things  palpably  working  to- 
gether for  good.  But  this  would  be  sight  and  not  faith. 
Is  it  not  a  relic  of  the  notional  religion  which  has  been  the 
Church's  bane,  a  survival  of  the  scientific  passion  to  under- 
stand things  instead  of  the  moral  passion  to  commmie  with 
persons  ?  Our  ideal  world  is  thought  to  contain  a  scheme 
of  truth  rather  than  a  burthen  of  meaning.  Even  the 
Kingdom  of  God  is  viewed  as  a  grand  social  fabric  working 
in  the  harmony  of  love,  instead  of  the  divine  Eangship,  a 
grand  common  relation  of  souls — of  God  to  us,  and  of  us  to 
God — from  which  a  heavenly  order  flows  sans  dire. 

We  see  not  yet  all  things,  but  we  see  Jesus.  There  is  a 
limitation  in  the  teleology  of  salvation  which  is  really  a 
concentration.  W^iat  we  are  given  is  not  an  orderly 
survey  of  the  area  of  salvation,  with  all  its  lines  streaming 
to  a  head  of  fruition  ;  but  it  is  a  vast  certainty  of  its  reality, 
its  principle,  and  its  victory.  We  have  not  a  plan  of  opera- 
tions but  a  goal  of  values  ;  not  the  strategy  of  Providence, 
but  the  finaUty  of  Redemption.     God's  revelation  does  not 


v.]    SALVATION  THEOLOGICAL  BUT  NOT  SYSTEIVIATIC    79 

range  the  field  of  history,  it  goes  to  its  centre — to  its  moral 
centre,  to  the  site  both  of  its  power  and  its  impotence,  to 
the  conscience.  The  matter  is  not  one  of  speculative  nor 
of  scientific  theology.  It  is  ethical.  The  certainty  is 
morally  mystic.  The  conscience  is  the  creative  region  of 
all  history,  and  when  that  is  set  right  with  its  holy  Creator 
all  will  be  right  in  tail.  It  is  there  that  Humanity  is  one 
— in  that  which  God  has  done  for  the  conscience  of  the  race, 
in  the  Reconciliation  which  undoes  guilt,  and  makes  moral 
peace  and  endless  power  for  the  soul  and  for  the  race.  Man 
is  most  surely  one  only  in  his  divine  destiny,  only  as  re- 
deemed. Our  Christian  faith  is  that  we  are  redeemed,  that 
the  end  of  our  soul  is  sure,  since  Christ  has  become  respon- 
sible for  it.  But  He  took  charge  of  it  by  no  private  arrange- 
ment with  units,  but  in  an  Act  of  Salvation  which  new 
created  the  whole  world.  Therefore  in  Him  we  are  as  sure 
that  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  the  grand  goal  of  the  universe 
as  we  are  of  our  own  soul's  destiny.  What  reconciles 
my  warring  conscience  in  Christ,  and  makes  me  one  in 
my  pacified  soul,  since  it  is  in  Christ,  certifies  to  me 
also  the  destined  unity  of  the  race.  And  in  this  faith 
we  know  that  the  Kingdom  not  only  awaits  all  things 
and  affairs,  but  crucially  subdues  them  and  growingly 
pervades  them  as  their  informing  principle.  For  our 
faith  the  victorious  Christ  is  involved  and  dominant.  He 
is  immanent  and  transcendent,  in  the  movement  of  the 
world.  But  not  only  so  ;  He  coincides  with  its  consum- 
mation. For  man  to  live  is  Christ.  All  things  are  (so  to 
say)  tied  up  in  Christ  and  His  Cross.  Every  stage  of  man's 
progress  must  go  to  His  judgment-seat ;  and  it  is  progress 
only  as  it  may  be  so  measured  there.  It  is  true  progress 
only  by  its  relation  to  Him,  His  Holiness,  and  His  Eternity, 
and  not  by  what  we  can  see  and  assess  as  its  contribution 
to  progress  as  we  deem  it — even  to  what  seems  moral  and 
spiritual  progress.  Progress,  as  an  object  and  a  standard, 
has  played  its  part  for  the  time  being,  and  must  wait  in 


80  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

the  wings.  This  shattering  war  shows  that.  The  supreme 
object  of  creation  and  of  liistory  (I  have  said)  is  to  bring 
every  man  before  the  judgment-seat  of  the  grace  of  Christ. 
It  is  not  to  provide  each  \\dth  a  minimum  of  three  acres 
and  a  cow,  and  keep  his  pot  boiling. 

So  our  certain  faith  m  a  di%ane  goal  not  only  depends 
on  our  faith  in  redemption,  but  it  is  determined  in  its 
large  form  by  God's  way  of  redemption.  And  this  is  not 
evolutionary  improvement  and  elevation  shining  more  and 
more  to  the  perfect  day  ;  but  it  is  crisis,  judgment,  atone- 
ment, suffering,  moral  revolution,  and  re-creation  from  a 
new  centre.  The  only  possible  belief  in  a  teleology  of  the 
world  (if  it  is  to  be  thorough)  is  a  religious  solution  of  a 
moral  issue.  It  is  that  evangelical  faith  in  God's  holy 
atonement  which  is  the  trust  and  burthen  of  the  Church. 
The  Gospel  of  the  Church,  of  Grace  to  conscience,  issuing 
from  the  greatest  moral  crisis  of  Time  and  cf  God,  is  the 
key  of  history.  The  destiny  to  salvation  is  the  primum 
movens,  the  essential,  formative,  and  dominant  thing  in 
the  history  of  Humanity.  The  stream  is  often  forced 
underground,  but  it  never  loses  volume,  power,  or  instinct 
for  its  goal.  Its  object  is  to  produce  a  realm  of  personalities 
not  only  moral  but  holy,  and  not  only  holy  but  redeemed 
into  a  holiness  they  had  lost  the  power  ever  to  achieve. 

It  has  often  been  charged  upon  historians  of  the  Church, 
and  justly,  that  they  have  marred  that  history  by  disre- 
gard of  the  world  around  it,  by  treating  '  profane '  history 
as  that  history  itself  might  treat  zoology.  But  the  fault  is 
not  all  on  one  side.  Aji  even  greater  mistake  is  made  by 
those  who  treat  the  history  of  the  world  with  no  vital 
reference  to  the  history  of  its  finest  product, — the  Church, 
its  moral  principle,  and  its  central  message  for  man.  It 
is  only  in  the  Church's  Gospel,  the  Gospel  of  a  Church  in 
organic  yet  miraculous  connection  with  the  natural  man, 
that  we  find  a  teleology  of  history.     But,  if  the  world's 


v.]  SALVATION  THEOLOGICAL  BUT  NOT  SYSTEMATIC  81 

teleology  is  thus  religiously  sure,  by  the  same  religion  it  is 
determined  as  a  moral  teleology.  And  it  is  determined 
not  simply  bj^  the  weight  of  a  moral  order  more  ubiquitous 
and  constant  than  we  can  experience,  but  by  the  moral 
crisis  of  the  Cross  whose  finality  we  can  experience,  ending 
in  a  Kingdom  to  whose  righteousness  all  things  else  are 
added.  With  the  Kingdom  of  God  civilisation  is  but 
throT\Ti  in  ;  it  is  a  by-product  of  the  Kingdom  ;  and  its 
pace  must  be  set  by  the  Kingdom's  etliic  on  peril  of 
judgment  and  collapse.  If  civilisation  collapsed,  the 
Divine  Kingdom  is  yet  immune  from  its  doom.  '  The 
City  of  God  remaineth.' 

*  I  saw  ...  0  brother,  'mid  far  sands 
The  palm-tree-cinctured  city  stands, 
Bright  white  beneath,  as  Heaven,  bright  blue, 
Leans  o'er  it,  while  the  years  pursue 
Their  course,  unable  to  abate 
Its  Paradisal  laugh  at  fate  ! ' 

It  is  the  nature  and  faith  of  this  Kingdom — the  faith 
and  not  simply  the  ideal  of  a  Kingdom  which  is  actually 
set  up  in  the  Cross — that  makes  Christianity  universal. 
It  is  universal,  not  empirically,  not  yet  actually,  but  poten- 
tially in  its  nature,  genius,  and  destiny.  It  cannot  but  be 
missionary.  We  believe  in  the  world  because  we  believe 
in  its  goal,  and  we  believe  in  its  goal  because  we  believe 
supremely  in  its  God,  and  consult  His  Glory  more  even  than 
the  happiness  of  men.  And  we  believe  in  God  because  of 
His  Christ,  His  Cross,  His  victory,  and  His  Gospel. 

It  is  often  thought  remarkable  that  modern  Protestant 
missions  should  have  arisen  out  of  a  creed  whose  aspect  was 
so  home,  and  whose  sympathy  was  so  limited,  as  Calvinism, 
and  the  second-  or  third-rate  Calvinism  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  And,  no  doubt,  to  our  humanist  notions  of  re- 
ligion this  is  a  great  paradox.  But  that  is  due  to  such 
notions — to   our   anthropocentric  point   of   view.     These 


82  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

missionary  pioneers  of  a  century  ago  began  with  the  glory 
of  God  rather  than  the  pity  of  man.  Their  attitude  to 
men  was  sometimes  unsympathetic — especially  to  their 
religions.  But  the  lesson  is  that,  in  spite  of  such  defects, 
a  creed  which  starts  from  the  glory  of  God  has  more  power 
for  man's  welfare  than  one  that  is  founded  in  the  welfare 
of  man  alone.  Calvin,  with  all  the  traits  in  him  that  are 
now  easily  and  cheaply  branded  as  inhuman,  was  the 
saviour  of  evangelical  religion  for  the  world  as  even  Luther 
was  not ;  and  he  has  been  worth  more  to  modem  demo- 
cracy than  his  great  humanist  rival  and  complement 
Rousseau.  If  we  study  God's  freedom  as  supremely  as 
Calvin  did.  He  will  see  to  ours.  A  theocentric  creed  has 
more  and  longer  blessing  for  man  than  an  anthropocentric. 
It  is  the  divine  in  our  creed  that  makes  it  last,  though  it 
may  be  the  humane  that  makes  it  attract.  For  it  gives  us 
certainty  as  to  the  last  result.  Our  steps  are  not  then 
tentative,  but  apostolic — dogmatic  in  the  great  and  royal 
sense.  It  gives  us  the  final  teleology  in  the  Kingdom  as 
part  of  our  certainty  of  the  Gospel.  IMissions  have  lan- 
guished to  their  present  serious  state  with  the  growth  in 
the  last  fifty  years  of  humanitarian  Christianity — which 
tends  to  exhaust  our  Christian  beneficence  on  the  things  that 
come  nearer  us  than  Christ,  on  the  needs,  wrongs,  and  woes 
nearest  us  at  home,  and  therefore  most  keenly  felt.  Our 
religion  has  come  to  live  on  sympathy  rather  than  faith ; 
and  sympathy  will  not  carry  what  religion  has  to  bear 
or  faith  to  do.  The  ground  of  missions  is  neither  generous 
pity  nor  '  sailing  orders '  from  Christ,  but  inspiration, 
the  mspiration  and  genius  of  His  world  Gospel.  It  is  the 
inspiration  of  His  '  finished  work,'  and  therefore  the  faith 
of  His  sure  Kingdom  as  the  last  goal,  the  divine  destiny, 
and  the  deepest  nisus  of  the  whole  world. 

I  spoke  a  little  ago  of  the  bane  of  a  notional  religion  and 
the  reduction  of  the  theology  at  the  heart  of  Christian 


v.]    SALVATION  THEOLOGICAL  BUT  NOT  SYSTEMATIC    83 

faith  to  a  scheme  of  truths.  I  alluded  to  the  treatment  of 
Revelation  as  something  propositional  rather  than  redemp- 
tive, and  even  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  as  the  organisation 
of  society  by  love  between  its  members  instead  of  by  their 
common  and  holy  relation  to  a  loving  God.  I  spoke  of 
the  way  the  true  idea  of  Revelation  was  destroyed  by  being 
viewed  as  the  conveyance  of  truth  about  God  and  His 
action,  instead  of  God's  actual  coming  and  acting  ;  so  that 
the  religion  which  responds  to  it  dropped  to  a  mode  of 
creed,  an  orthodoxy,  instead  of  rising  to  personal  faith  in 
the  Saviour.  I  have  dwelt  also  on  the  Object  of  our  faith 
as  One  acting  more  than  teaching,  One  to  be  trusted  and 
not  traced.  I  said  that  religion  was  power  more  than  truth, 
and  warmth  more  than  light  alone.  I  said  that  even  an 
essentially  moral  process  like  regeneration  had  come, 
through  the  severance  from  ethical  processes  like  atone- 
ment and  justification,  to  need  to  be  moralised — to  be 
re-claimed  from  its  baptismal  or  its  emotional  impotence, 
and  treated  as  a  re-creation  really  conscious,  personal, 
and  holy,  and  therefore  moral  in  its  nature  and  genius.  I 
should  like  here  to  take  up  these  points,  and  dwell  on  them 
further,  because  the  passion  for  founding  on  a  rational 
justification  of  God,  whether  in  a  historic  strategy  of 
Providence  or  a  scientific  scheme  of  belief,  is  one  that 
leaves  our  faith  in  a  divine  teleology  helpless  in  great  crises. 
It  is  staggered,  if  not  killed,  when  historic  progress  seems 
to  end  around  us  in  a  social  collapse  and  a  moral  anarchy 
in  which  everything  is  held  lawful  to  a  powerful  state.  But 
if  the  moral  soul  is  anchored  on  the  Gospel  of  the  Cross  and 
Kingdom  of  God  in  a  historic  crisis  really  greater  than  any 
war,  it  cannot  be  swept  away  by  any  currents  or  storms  in 
history.  We  are  more  than  conquerors  through  Him  that 
loved  us  and  gave  Himself  for  us.  This  means  not  only 
that  we  are  conquerors  and  more,  but  that,  even  did  we  not 
feel  conquei^ors,  we  should  be  more  than  victorious  by  our 
share  in  the  final  victory  in  which  Love  overcame  the  world. 


84  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

But,  if  faith  be  stayed  only  on  the  observed  growth  of 
moral  and  spiritual  progress,  if  it  be  but  optimist,  if  it 
turn  on  the  evidences  of  amelioration,  the  growth  in 
humanity,  and  the  progress  of  nations,  it  is  at  the  mercy 
of  such  shocks  as  the  present,  in  which  progress  commits 
suicide,  and  which  bring  to  the  ground  in  a  great  fall  the 
creeds  built  on  the  shifting  dunes. 

The  reaction  against  theological  system  has  run  high  in 
the  Free  Churches,  where  it  has  gone  so  far  as  to  make 
people  widely  indifferent  to  all  theological  interior  for  faith. 
The  Love  of  God,  for  instance,  has  been  removed  from  its 
New  Testament  setting.  It  has  been  treated  as  the  mere 
superlative  of  romantic  love.  It  has  been  detached  from 
the  idea  of  propitiation  with  which  the  Apostles  identify 
it  (1  John  iv.  10),  and  regarded  as  an  infinite  dilation  of 
human  affection  (where  the  real  revelation  is  held  to  be). 
Judgment  is  viewed  but  as  a  device  of  the  Father  instead 
of  a  constituent  of  His  Fatherhood  as  holy.  Little  wonder 
then  that  love  has  gone  thin  in  the  expansion,  and  lost 
power.  It  has  ceased  in  the  process  to  be  understood  as 
Holy  Love.  (I  speak  but  generally  and  broadly,  not  of 
universal  features,  but  of  dangerous  tendencies.)  It  has 
been  de-ethicised  in  the  sense  that  it  has  its  ethic  but  as  a 
sequel  and  supplement,  and  not  as  its  intrinsic  principle. 
Its  holiness  has  been  held  to  have  no  reaction  in  judgment, 
and  to  need  no  such  assertion  in  the  Cross  which  founds  our 
faith,  but  only  appreciation  as  faith  went  on.  The  atone- 
ment of  the  Holy  to  the  Holy  has  fallen  to  be  a  mere  theo- 
logoumenon,  instead  of  standing  as  the  moral  focus  and 
crisis  of  God's  conscience  and  man's  in  history  actual  and 
practical.  Accordingly,  the  moral  action  of  love  has  been 
reduced  to  social  conduct,  its  holy  quality  to  passion  intense 
in  quantity,  and  its  passion  to  sentiment.  This  generates 
an  atmosphere,  either  stuffy  or  airy,  in  which  the  last 
and  greatest  issues  between  God  and  man  cannot  breathe. 
Thought  is  trivialised  into  interests  neither  universal  nor 


v.]    SALVATION  THEOLOGICAL  BUT  NOT  SYSTEMATIC    85 

fundamental,  neither  tragic  nor  glorious,  but  just  drab  or 
humdrum  ;  so  that  adequate  treatment  of  ultimate  things 
is  dismissed  by  the  sentimentalists  as  obscurity.  The 
ministry  of  Eternal  Grace  sinks  into  the  ministries  of  pass- 
ing help  ('  This  ought  ye  to  have  done  without  leaving 
the  other  undone ').  Churches  are  frayed  into  ribbons  of 
small  but  kindly  endeavour.  Sacraments  are  deserted  for 
socialities  (as  in  the  Corinthian  Church).  And  there  issues 
from  them  no  moral  Word  piercing  and  commanding 
enough  to  reach  the  public  soul  at  the  depths  to  which  it  is 
stirred  by  a  catastrophe  of  the  first  rank.  The  name  of 
Jesus  is  dear,  but  Christ  is  no  Leader  and  Commander  to 
the  people. 

If  we  turn  our  eye  upon  the  other  great  section  of  the 
Church,  on  Anglicanism,  we  find  a  somewhat  different 
situation.  Instead  of  rational  morality  and  sentimental 
impression,  we  find  mystic  (not  to  say  magic)  sacramentalism 
and  creedalism,  crossing,  and  often  crushing,  the  moral 
timbre  of  the  evangelical  note  which  makes  a  Church  a 
Church.  We  find  what  may  be  compendiously  called  the 
reign  of  Chalcedonism,  the  preference  of  theosophy  to 
theology,  of  God's  thought  to  His  action ;  the  creedal, 
institutional,  official  note,  the  action  of  the  schematic,  non- 
etliical,  non-prophetic,  canonical  spirit  in  construing  Reve- 
lation and  Providence.  We  find  it  even  where  there  may  be 
considerable  criticism  of  the  formal  Chalcedonian  theology, 
and  much  effort  to  simplify  belief  to  the  measure  of  the 
current  mind.  One  effect  of  this  theosophic  and  institu- 
tional habit  of  mind  is  that  the  Anglican  scholar,  when  he 
tries  to  modernise  a  doctrine  like  the  Incarnation,  tends  to 
prefer  a  subliminal  basis  to  one  theological,  ethical,  and 
evangelical.  By  Chalcedonism  is  meant  the  standardised 
type  of  religion  represented  ecclesiastically  in  Catholicism, 
theologically  in  what  is  called  the  Athanasian  Creed.  As 
to  that  creed  excej^tion  is  here  taken  less  to  its  matter  than 


86  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

to  its  manner.  So  far  as  the  matter  goes,  if  the  doctrine  of 
the  Truiity  (which  certainly  is  at  the  heart  of  Christianity) 
was  to  be  expressed  in  the  intellectual  conditions  of  the 
fourth  century  it  probably  could  not  have  been  better  done. 
I  do  not  even  object  sweepingly  to  the  damnatory  note. 
There  are  not  nearly  enough  preachers  who  preach,  nor 
people  who  take  home,  the  reality  of  damnation,  or  the 
connection  of  liberty  with  it.  The  vice  in  the  creed  is  the 
association  of  salvation  or  damnation  with  forms  which, 
though  they  are  not  intellectualist,  are  yet  much  too  in- 
tellectual and  too  Uttle  ethical  for  general  faith,  and  must 
be  taken  on  external  authority.  There  must,  indeed,  be 
external  authority,  but  not  on  the  thing  that  makes  a 
soul  Christian  and  settles  its  Eternity.  The  creed,  I  have 
said,  is  not  intellectualist.  The  reality  and  power  of 
Redemption  work  behind  it  all,  and  really  make  its  ruling 
interest.  But  it  is  couched  in  elaborate  terms  drawn 
admirably  from  the  metaphysic  of  the  day,  but  reflecting 
the  undue  primacy  of  that  metaphysic.  It  labours  mth 
a  machinery  which  has  long  ceased  to  be  equal  to  the 
needs  and  habits  of  the  Christian  conscience.  It  conse- 
crates unduly  the  patristic  stage  of  the  Church,  at  the 
cost  of  the  New  Testament  norm.  Its  genius  is  too  alien 
to  the  New  Testament  note,  and  the  one  charter  of  the 
Church  there — to  the  ethical  and  experimental  quality  of 
the  Gospel.  It  is  too  dominantly  philosophical,  and  too 
little  moral,  to  correspond  with  the  New  Testament 
Gospel,  and  to  its  new  creative  power.  Its  conception 
of  Eternal  Life  is  not  the  New  Testament  one,  being 
the  physical  purified  by  the  quasi-physical,  rather  than 
the  natural  overcome  by  the  spiritual.  Redemption,  I 
say,  is  indeed  the  great  note  of  the  creed  ;  but  it  has  begun, 
nay,  it  has  gone  some  way,  to  be  unmoralised.  Attention 
is  deflected  from  the  New  Covenant,  which  was  Christ's 
first  concern,  to  the  new  nature,  which  He  does  not  speak  of. 
Interest  is  removed  even  from  the  new  man  to  the  new 


v.]   SALVATION  THEOLOGICAL  BUT  NOT  SYSTEMATIC   87 

nature.  It  is  removed  from  the  Christian  adjustment  of 
the  holy  conscience  of  God  and  the  guilty  conscience  of 
Man  in  the  Cross  ;  and  it  is  turned  upon  certain  metaphysi- 
cal implicates,  which  were  imported  more  than  inspired  into 
faith,  which  were  accepted  rather  than  produced  by  it, 
and  which  can  be  very  interesting  to  the  morally  unregener- 
ate  mind.  I  will  not  say  that  these  were  intruded  into 
faith,  because  there  is  a  place  for  them  there  ;  but  at  best 
they  are  its  scientific  postulates  rather  than  its  religious 
objects  or  products.  The  result  of  the  importance  given  to 
this  element  in  the  Chalcedonian  mentality  (so  strangely  dull 
still  to  the  Evangelical  note)  is  this,  that  for  the  conditions 
of  salvation  the  lay  Christian,  who  does  not  understand  a 
scientific  theology  detached  from  experience,  must  depend 
on  the  word  and  authority  of  the  Church  which  does.  His 
mere  assent  gives  him  his  Christian  status.  From  which 
implicit  assent  he"  descends  to  such  personal  experience  as 
may  thereupon  be  open  to  him.  That  is  a  false  foundation 
and  an  inverted  movement.  It  is  a  vaTepov  irporepov.  It 
puts  creed  before  salvation,  as  if  revelation  were  theology 
instead  of  theological,  as  if  it  were  truth  instead  of  redemp- 
tion, a  theme  rather  than  a  power.  The  moral  method, 
when  the  Gospel  is  presented  with  the  prestige  of  the 
Church,  is  to  rise  from  experience  to  assent,  from  experience 
of  the  Gospel  to  assent  to  the  Church  theology  of  it,  from 
life  doctrines  we  can  directly  verify  to  thought  doctrines 
we  cannot,  from  experience  of  Redemption  to  assent  to 
Incarnation,  from  personal  religion  to  corporate  dogmatic. 
But  to  begin  with  either  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  or  the 
Incarnation,  and  descend  to  an  atoning  Redemption  (as 
Catholicism  did,  both  in  its  history  and  its  principle)  is  to 
take  the  note  of  the  Gospel  out  of  the  Church,  and  to 
depreciate  a  Christianity  of  personal  experience  for  one  of 
formal  status,  in  which  the  man  is  ranged  rather  than 
changed.  It  throws  the  accent  of  the  national  religion 
off  the  conscience,  off  the  moral  nature  and  action  of  the 


88  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

sacred  Word.  It  means  beginning  with  something  which 
we  do  not  understand,  but  which  we  take  because  it  is 
taught  by  Bible  or  Church,  and  then  going  on  to  make 
this  acceptance  the  condition  of  benefiting  in  experience. 
The  Incarnation,  for  the  lay  mind,  means  the  miraculous 
birth,  which,  as  you  cannot  verify  it  in  experience,  must 
be  taken  on  the  authority  of  the  Bible  or  the  Church. 
For  others  it  means  either  a  metaphysical  truth  taken  on 
the  same  authority  ;  or  it  is  a  moral  reality  rising  (as  in  the 
New  Testament)  from  the  experience  of  forgiveness  in  the 
Gospel  and  from  the  certainty  that  Christ  has  there  done 
on  us  a  work  that  none  but  God  could  do.  Its  metaphysic 
is  a  metaphysic  either  of  substantial  being  or  of  moral 
action  on  the  divine  scale.  Is  the  former  not  the  Catholic 
note  on  the  whole — Roman  or  Anglican  ?  Is  it  not  in 
tune  with  the  sacramentarian  idea,  with  its  stress  on  the 
conversion  of  a  substance  rather  than  a  soul  ?  Is  it  not 
more  Catholic  than  Evangelical,  more  metaphysical  than 
moral,  descending  in  use  to  be  more  magical  than  either  ? 
The  central  doctrine,  it  is  said,  is  the  Incarnation,  w^hich 
gives  value  to  all  human  relations,  theological  truth,  or 
sacraments.  It  means  a  process,  largely  unthinkable, 
whereby  the  infinite  nature  of  God  and  the  finite  nature  of 
man  received  an  adjustment  capable  of  embodiment  in 
historic  conditions — something  no  more  verifiable  in  experi- 
ence than  the  miraculous  birth.  It  is  to  be  taken  therefore 
on  the  authority  of  a  Church  of  experts  settling  it  in  councils 
whose  efiective  number  and  competency  are  a  matter  of 
varying  opinion.  Begin  with  believing  that,^  then  you  have 
a  di\ine  ground  for  ethic  and  a  divine  foundation  for 
conscience  ;  then  also  you  will  meet  the  prior  condition 
for  profiting  by  the  divine  Atonement  of  your  guilt.  The 
Incarnation  (it  is  said)  affects  your  whole  nature,  but  the 
Atonement  only  the  moral  part  of  it,  where  guilt  lies. 

1  I  speak  but  of  the  theological  method,  not  the  religious  experience  of  the 
Church  with  this  theology. 


v.]    SALVATION  THEOLOGICAL  BUT  NOT  SYSTEMATIC    89 

(Think  of  conscience  being  treated  but  as  a  part  of  man  ! 
No  wonder  Christendom  suffers  from  a  double  morality.) 
The  Semi-Pelagian  note  is  then  easily  regarded  as  the  true 
one,  and  guilt  is  not  held  to  be  entire  impotence  with  God. 
Begin  everything  with  Christ's  relation  to  human  nature 
and  not  to  human  will  or  conscience.  Begin  by  believing  in 
an  Incarnation  more  or  less  philosophical  on  the  authority 
either  of  the  Church  or  of  the  Bible.  Begin  by  postulating, 
in  a  Coleridgean  way,  that  humanity  was  '  constituted '  in 
Christ,  then  the  Atonement  can  receive  its  sequential  place 
in  the  system,  and  Redemption  play  its  due  part  in  your 
faith.  That  is,  begin  with  metaphysic  more  or  less  diluted, 
or  you  will  not  arrive  at  religion.  Begin  with  a  faith  in 
such  an  Incarnation,  else  you  can  have  no  saving  faith  in 
Redemption.  Is  this  not  a  uarepov  irporepov  ?  Is  it  not 
putting  religion  on  another  than  a  moral  foundation, 
and  giving  it  another  than  a  moral  quaUty  for  life  ? 
Doubtless  for  thought,  for  theological  science.  Incarnation 
is  the  logical  prius.  It  is  at  the  rational  base  of  Atonement, 
of  Redemption,  which  was  God's  offering  up  of  Himself  in 
Christ.  But  that  is  to  say  it  was  Grod's  Act  in  Christ  more 
than  His  mere  presence.  The  metaphysic  is  one  of  ethic,  of 
action,  not  of  being ;  it  is  of  will  rather  than  thought.  The 
Church's  message  is  not  there  first  for  the  thinkers,  but  for 
the  active  world — for  the  world  of  conscience,  for  the  theo- 
logy of  experience.  The  Church  indeed  must  be  theological 
— if  it  would  but  go  about  its  theology  in  the  experient 
rather  than  the  expert  way.  And  for  experience  it  is  the 
atoning  Redemption  that  is  at  the  practical  base  of  belief 
in  the  Incarnation  and  prescribes  its  nature.  And,  if  we 
invert  that  order,  as  the  school  theology  did,  is  it  not  bound 
to  affect  the  whole  relation  of  religion  to  ethic  and  to 
society.  Is  it  not  likely  to  postpone  the  moral  genius  of 
Christianity;  to  articulate  the  Cross  into  the  moral  order  of 
nature  instead  of  finding  it  to  be  the  crisis  and  judgment 
of  nature  and  the  natural  conscience ;  to  consecrate  the  lex 


90  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

naturae  rather  than  convert  it ;  to  canonise  the  decent  and 
conventional  elder  brother  rather  than  the  prodigal  for- 
given much ;  and  to  make  any  ethical  demand  which  seems 
to  revolutionise  the  natural  ethic,  or  invert  its  values, 
seem  extravagance  ?  The  Chalcedonian  type  of  belief,  on 
Catholic  or  Protestant  ground,  does  not  appeal  to  man's 
conscience  and  then  rise  to  his  intelligence.  It  begins  with 
his  intelligence,  and  may  or  may  not  go  on  to  conscience. 
It  does  not  convert  a  man,  and  then  make  a  theologian  of 
him  ;  it  makes  a  theologian  of  him,  and  then  as  to  con- 
version— well,  if  it  do  not  come,  there  was  the  baptismal 
regeneration  whereby  to  escape  the  worst  if  we  neglect 
so  great  a  moral  salvation.  In  Anglican  writings  (of  the 
most  valuable  kind  other^^dse)  it  is  startHng  to  find  how 
the  element  of  ethic  and  of  atonement  in  the  nature  of 
Christ  has  been  submerged  by  the  sacramental  and  moral 
insight  reduced  to  moral  interest. 

But  I  am  not  here  dwelling  on  the  unmoraUsing  effect  of 
Chalcedonian  sacramentarianism,  but  rather  of  what  may 
be  called  its  propositionalism.  They  both  act  in  the  non- 
ethical  direction ;  but,  as  I  am  discussing  a  religion  of 
schematic  teleology  and  theodicy,  it  is  less  the  magical 
than  the  logical  perversion  of  Christian  faith  that  lies  in 
my  track.  Chalcedonism  is  orthodox  rationalism.  And 
I  am  complaining  that  this  intellectualising  of  faith  has 
unmoralised,  and  often  demoralised,  it.  Both  the  Church 
and  the  world  have  been  led  to  look  for  God's  self -justifica- 
tion in  a  schematic  or  strategic  way  instead  of  a  moral,  in 
a  system  of  coherent  truth  or  in  an  order  of  things  palpably 
telle  and  beneficent,  instead  of  a  Person's  Act  of  crisis, 
judgment,  and  conquest.  They  have  sought  it  by  sight 
not  faith.  We  have  been  set  to  trace  God's  thought  or 
process  instead  of  trusting  His  absolute  Grace  in  Christ ; 
and  we  have  sought  its  moral  victory  less  in  a  kingdom  of 
divine  relation  than  in  forms  of  social  organisation.  In 
this  way  thought  has  immoralised  faith,  and,  by  turning  it 


v.]    SALVATION  THEOLOGICAL  BUT  NOT  SYSTE^IATIC    91 

into  sight,  begun  the  slope  to  its  demorahsation.  It  has 
not  found  the  prime  object  of  faith  in  the  eternal  moral 
Act  of  God  in  history — an  Act  central  and  fontal,  new- 
creative  and  revolutionary  for  the  conscience  ;  but  it  has 
made  that  object  (if  an  act  at  all)  to  be  an  act  largely 
metaphysical,  like  the  Incarnation,  the  faith  of  which  would 
provide  the  only  effective  access  to  the  moral  Act  of  Atone- 
ment. In  a  word,  faith  has  become  academised,  then 
macadamised  and  trodden  underfoot.  Its  gigantic  frame 
is  tied  down  with  packthreads  innumerable  and  effective. 

We  are  apt  to  confine  our  criticism  of  the  systematic 
passion  to  theology  or  Church.  We  do  not  stop  to  reflect 
that  the  objection  taken  to  these  really  is  that,  as  systems, 
they  coUide  with  another  system  which  is  our  own  hobby. 
Only  we  call  it  a  practical  system,  efficiency  or  results. 
Such  hke  names  we  use  for  our  ideal  scheme  which  the 
other  schemes  seem  to  retard.  We  construct  a  plan,  pro- 
gramme, pohty,  or  Utopia  ;  and  things  go  well  as  they 
make  for  it,  ill  as  they  do  not.  We  call  its  fulfilment 
success.  We  plant  our  ambition  for  it  on  God.  We  set 
our  heart  on  it  as  a  piece  of  our  religion.  We  regard  its 
success  as  a  proof  of  its  truth  and  right.  We  really  care 
for  the  success  more  than  for  either  the  right  or  truth. 
We  beheve  in  these  just  as  they  work.  With  their  failure 
in  the  machmery  of  things  faith  goes.  A  certain  practical 
construction  of  things  gets  the  allegiance  due  to  Revela- 
tion. A  visible  teleology  takes  the  place  of  a  sure  faith. 
The  success  measures  the  cause.  Old  Hebraism  and  new 
Pragmatism  meet.  Goodness  ought  to  work.  Failure  is 
our  moral  impeachment.  If  the  thing  do  not  go  it  should 
not  go.  Adversity  but  registers  hidden  guilt.  If  we  win, 
does  it  follow  we  were  right  ?  If  we  lose,  is  it  because  we 
were  wrong  ?  The  failure  of  the  Son  of  God  was  the 
victory  that  overcame  the  whole  world.  Yet  we  have 
even  preachers  telling  the  pubHc,  with  an  incredible 
stupidity,  that  to  prove  Christianity  to  yourself  you  must 


92  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

try  it,  and  find  how  well  it  goes.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
you  cannot  try  it  till  you  believe  it.  And  you  have  not 
got  it  till  you  are  thinking  more  of  your  God  than  of 
your  success,  and  trusting  Him  most  when  your  success 
fails — as  Christ  did  on  the  Cross  which  was  God's  real 
success  with  the  world.  We  worship  success,  we  do  not 
believe  in  the  omnipotence  of  the  holy  revealed  in  service. 
It  is  no  wonder  that  in  the  circumstances  Christian  ethic 
should  become  a  more  or  less  otiose  appendix  to  natural,  nor 
that  Christian  faith  should  become  too  dependent  on  natural 
continuit}^  natural  evolution,  or  the  meeting  of  natural 
expectation.  It  is  not  strange  that  in  these  circumstances 
New  Testament  morality  should  become  a  sectional,  or 
even  sectarian,  affair  compared  \vith  a  Nicomachean  ethic 
or  a  Hellenic  catholicity.  Chalcedonism  is  a  Christianity 
based  on  culture,  not  to  say  ruled  by  it ;  and  Germany, 
both  by  its  Byzantinism  and  its  militarism,  has  shown  where 
that  ends.  It  ends  in  a  national  character  in  whose  for- 
mation the  barrack  has  had  much  more  to  do  than  the 
Church,  and  the  New  Testament  hardly  anytliing  at  all. 
How  far  is  our  own  national  character  due  to  similar 
egoist  influences,  and  especially  to  the  same  neglect  of 
Christian  nurture  ?  We  still  await  a  culture  based  on 
Christianity,  i.e.  less  on  Christ's  teaching  than  on  the 
moral  regeneration  flowing  from  God's  moral  Act  and  crisis 
of  the  Cross,  creative  and  supreme  for  the  whole  race,  and 
rich  with  all  the  fullness  of  Christ.  It  is  through  this  Act 
alone  that  we  rise  to  the  faith,  fullness,  and  power  of  the 
Incarnation  ^  that  is  within  it.  It  is  His  Atonement  in 
its  experience  value,  it  is  the  rich  and  regenerative  obla- 
tion of  the  race's  conscience  there,  it  is  the  Eternal  Life 
created  in  us  as  moral  beings  there,  that  give  us  access 
to  the  real  meaning  of  His  Incarnation  and  found  the  true, 
the  evangelical,  Catholicism.  It  is  such  faith  th^t  finds 
meaning  in  the  Incarnation  as  a  moral  Act,  be5^ond  mere 
1  Experience  is  the  method  but  not  the  measure  of  faith. 


v.]  SALVATION  THEOLOGICAL  BUT  NOT  SYSTEMATIC   93 

prodigy,  meaning  for  the  moral  soul  that  makes  us  men — 
even  if  guilty  men.  However  we  speculate,  we  know 
nothing  of  any  Incarnation  except  what  our  conscience 
finds  in  the  atoning  Redemption  and  its  implicates  of 
Reconciliation.  A  holy  God  self -atoned  in  Christ  is  the 
moral  centre  of  the  sinful  world.  Our  justification  by 
God  has  its  key  in  God's  justification  of  Himself.  If  we 
begin  with  culture  we  shall  end  with  crises  ;  but  if  we 
begin  with  crisis  at  the  Cross  all  culture  is  added  to  it. 

Chalcedonism,  therefore,  construed  as  the  primacy  of  the 
formal,  systematic,  and  institutional,  puts  a  premium  upon 
a  non-ethical  type  of  religion.  It  breeds  in  society  a 
Catholicity  more  correct  than  creative,  more  sootliing  than 
searching  :  it  creates  a  conscience  which  is  the  victim 
of  order  rather  than  the  beneficiary  of  grace,  and  which 
therefore  is  the  victim  of  despair  when  the  order  collapses, 
because  it  was  not  in  crisis  that  its  trust  was  born.  This  is 
the  antithesis  of  the  true  evangelical  note  ;  whose  dis- 
engagement from  it  began,  but  only  began,  in  the  Reforma- 
tion ;  and  which  has  been  prolonged  most  vitally  on  the 
more  Calvinistic  side,  the  more  historic  and  progressive 
side,  of  the  Reformation.  The  present  cataclj^sm  should 
make  an  end  of  Lutheranism,  or  reduce  it  to  the  Teutonic 
sect.  Chalcedonism  means  the  substitution  for  experience 
of  truth,  and  metaphysical  truth,  on  the  external  authority 
of  a  Church  over  the  intelligence.  It  means  the  substitu- 
tion of  this  in  a  baptismal  regeneration  for  a  moral 
experience  (forgiveness,  regeneration,  and  reconciliation), 
on  the  liberating  authority  to  the  conscience  of  the  Grospel 
Word.  It  is  this  propositionai  surrogate  for  the  moral 
experience  of  regeneration  which  has  such  a  de-ethicising 
effect  on  the  Catholic  side,  as  sentimental  impressionism 
saps  moral  divination  on  the  other.^ 

1  To  be  just,  I  should  like  to  say  here  that  such  a  view  of  the  Incarnation 
as  "Westcott  represents  does  not  fall  under  my  criticism  of  Chalcedonism. 
It  is  much  too  ethical  in  its  nature ;  and  Mr.  Mozley  points  out  to  me  how 


94  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

It  is  a  position  too  incongruous  to  be  permanent,  that 
Churches  which  are  one  upon  their  fundamental  theology 
should  be  out  of  communion  with  each  other  upon  its 
institutional  aspect  (as  is  the  case  with  Anglicanism  and 
the  other  Churches  of  the  country)  ;  or  that,  being  one  in 
every  other  respect,  they  should  be  institutionally  divided, 
and  even  rival,  on  a  rite,  as  is  the  case  between  the  Baptists 
and  all  other  Churches.  It  is  erecting  into  a  primary  place 
something  which  in  the  genius  of  Christianity  is  but  second- 
ary. It  is  maldng  the  canonical  first  and  the  evangelical 
second,  and  dividing  the  Gospel  by  that  which  is  not 
gospel,  but  only  exists  for  its  sake.  It  seems  a  singular 
thing,  and  it  must  surely  become  intolerable,  that,  in  the 
face  of  a  world  so  dreadful  that  it  takes  all  the  strength  of 
Christianity  to  believe  in  the  reign  of  God  in  it  or  His 
redemption  of  it,  believers  who  pray  apart  to  the  same  God, 
the  same  Christ,  the  same  atoning  Saviour,  should  refuse 
to  join  in  public  prayer  because  of  institutional  differences, 
and  the  freezing  there  of  what  was  meant  to  be  pliant  to 
occasion.  It  seems  to  point  to  some  deep  and  damaging 
dislocation  of  the  canonical,  institutional,  patristic,  medieval 
element  (the  yet  precious  element)  of  tradition.  It  indi- 
cates some  undue  and  Unconscious  influence  on  the  religious 
education  of  many  minds  by  this  aspect  of  things,  so  much 
more  academic  than  ethical,  more  traditional  than  evan- 
gelical, so  inadequate  to  a  day  of  judgment  like  the  present, 
which  breaks  open  a  new  time  and  a  new  world. 

I  would  repeat  that  the  criticism  on  which  I  have  ven- 
tured, both  of  the  Anglican  Church  and  the  rest,  has  been 
but  very  general,  and  it  has  referred  to  what  I  should  de- 
it  has  at  least  concurred  with  a  new  era  of  Bocial  interests  within  Anglican- 
ism. But  even  this  less  metaphysical  and  more  religious  view  is  less 
thorough  morally  than  is  required  by  the  nature  of  the  Gospel  before  it 
began  to  speak  the  language  of  the  Logos,  and  while  it  took  in  earnest  the 
idea  of  a  new  creation  and  a  regeneration  of  the  conscience. 


v.]  SALVATION  THEOLOGICAL  BUT  NOT  SYSTEMATIC    95 

scribe  as  tendencies  rather  than  features.     For,  if  one  is 
to  be  just  and  candid,  there  is  on  both  sides  the  ethical 
note  both  of  moral  creation  and  disciphne,  which  is  the 
note  and  blessing  of  Puritanism,  which  Puritanism  selected 
and  pressed  for  continuation  from  the  Catholic  tradition. 
It  would  be  hard  to  say  whether  there  was  now  more  of 
this  precious  element  of  character  on  the  one  side  or  on 
the  other.     Certainly  neither  can  claim  its  monopoly.     It 
is  the  inestimable  heritage  of    British  religion  ;    for   we 
have  had  no  Bartholomew,  either  of  Huguenots  or  of  Ana- 
baptists, to  destroy  such  a  sanative.     It  was  the  head  of 
the  monarch  and  not  the   soul  of   the  people  that  fell, 
while  France  and   Germany  chose   the  monarch  at   the 
people's  cost.     So  that,  in  France,  when  the  monarch  did 
fall,  there  was  no  public  conscience  to  be  executioner. 
And  in  Germany  it  is  the  lack  of  a  public  conscience  that 
has  encouraged  the  imperial  Wahnsinn,  fed  the  v^pc^,  and 
inflated  the  pride  that  precedes  a  fall,  whether  in  victory 
or  defeat.    Germany  has  been  ruined  morally  and  politically 
for  want  of  Church  freedom  and  its  public  courage.     It  is 
this  Puritan  note  in  church  and  chapel  that  is  the  differ- 
entia of  our  spiritual  history,  and  also  of  our  public.     The 
moral  note  in  our  religion  has  been  the  soul  and  secret  of 
our  national  liberty,  our  sympathy  with  liberty,  and  our 
service  to  it  in  the  world.     My  only  misgiving  and  com- 
plaint is  that  the  tendencies  of  religious  culture  among  us 
during  the  last  two  or  three  generations  may  have  cut  the 
communications  by  which  this  moral  genius  has  been  fed. 
The  new  humanism  may  have  detached  the  general  con- 
science of  our  national  Christianity  from  the  one  public 
focus  of  moral  creation  and  inspiration  in  the  Cross  of 
Christ — the  Cross  understood  evangelically,  as  the  crisis 
and  regeneration  of  the  universal  conscience  of  the  world 
by  the  eternal  conscience  of  a  God  of  holy  love. 

Such  views  of  theology  as  postpone  experience  to  belief, 
practice  to  creed,  conscience  to  assent,  or  regeneration  to 


96  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

impression,  in  the  non-moral  way  I  have  named,  are  among 
the  chief  reasons  why  the  Church  has  such  a  weak  moral 
impact  on  the  world,  and  why  its  theological  foundations 
seem  irrelevant  to  righteousness  and  impotent  for  crisis 
in  history  and  society.  They  do  not  coincide  with  the 
foundations  of  the  moral  world.  Therefore  they  are  re- 
garded as  themes  instead  of  being  felt  as  powers.  They  are 
treated  as  academic  principles  instead  of  life-giving  spirits. 
Such  considerations  help  to  explain  why  the  Gospel  of 
God's  Kingdom  (which,  by  right,  is  the  one  International) 
does  not  come  home  to  the  nations,  why  it  does  not  take 
charge  of  the  public  conscience  on  a  universal  scale  either 
to  inspire  courage  or  to  sustain  fortitude.  They  explain 
also  how  it  is  possible  socially  for  evangelical  sentiment  to 
co-exist  with  commercial  rapacity  without  a  deadly  jar ; 
for  the  methods  of  the  Standard  Oil  Company  to  share  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  same  soul  with  Church  life  and  Sunday- 
school  work ;  and,  generally,  how  men  can  lead  a  double 
life,  and  divide  the  one  soul  between  the  keen  egoism  of 
civilisation  and  the  self-sacrifice  of  the  Gospel,  without 
feehng  miserable  or  dishonest — till  one  day.  One  day  the 
moral  anomaly  suddenly  explodes,  and  the  latent  ethical 
outrage  takes  its  natural  and  inevitable  effect  in  a  world 
war  which  but  makes  overt  what  was  implicit  in  competi- 
tion, besting,  and  tariffs.  So  the  one  Judge  of  all  the 
earth  does  right.  A  religion  which  teaches  men  to  live 
from  two  centres  instead  of  one,  and  that  one  the  conscience, 
is  a  non-moral  religion  ;  it  serves  God  and  Mammon.  It 
has  a  fearful  looking  for  of  judgment.  It  has  the  soul  of 
schism  in  it,  which  takes  effect  in  the  wars  of  churches, 
classes,  and  nations.  War,  with  a  national  competition 
for  God  as  ally,  instead  of  a  national  obedience  to  Him  as 
Sovereign,  war  with  its  eagerness  to  have  Him  on  our  side 
instead  of  having  His  side  for  ours,  such  war  is  but  the 
debacle  of  a  religion  which  is  but  sequentially,  instead  of 
essentially,  moral,  whose  ethic  is  but  a  by-product.     It  is 


v.]  SALVATION  THEOLOGICAL  BUT  NOT  SYSTEMATIC  97 

the  fruit  of  the  union  of  a  civihsation  which  is  fundamentally 
egoist,  and  a  religion  also  egoist  and  propositional,  senti- 
mental, or  what  you  will,  only  not  holy.  An  egoist  civilisa- 
tion, an  individualist  salvation,  and  a  non-moral  theology 
in  a  world  which  belongs  by  right  to  the  kingdom  of 
conscience  and  Grod,  and  has  that  for  its  great  deep  nisus — 
such  things  do  not  make  debacle  strange  or  judgment 
wonderful.  The  shock  would  be  if  the  combination  did 
not  so  explode. 


THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [CH. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  FAILURE  OF  THE  CHURCH  AS  AN   INTER- 
NATIONAL  AUTHORITY 

A  TELEOLOGY  of  the  world  with  a  divine  destiny  for  it  in 
righteousness  is  so  beclouded  and  belied  by  the  actual  course 
of  events  that  the  form  in  which  revelation  guarantees  it 
must  be  (amongst  other  things)  a  theodicy.  It  must  be  a 
historic  self -justification  of  God.  And  that  must  be  not 
theoretical  but  historic  —  a  practical  establishment  of 
His  holy  goodness  in  the  face  of  everything.  It  must  be 
something  historic  which  enables  us  to  believe  in  the  last 
reaUty,  deep  rule,  and  final  triumph  of  goodness  in  spite  of 
history.  This  is  no  light  matter,  if  we  do  not  live  in  a  cell 
or  a  balloon.  It  is  not  so  hard  to  believe  in  a  blessed 
teleology  of  the  world  by  virtue  of  Christ's  work  and  Word 
— till  we  come  to  know  the  world.  Very  much  faith  is  only 
possible  through  ignorance  of  one's  self,  banality  of  stan- 
dard, or  lack  of  experience  of  the  world.  It  is  the  confi- 
dence of  those  that  have  never  had  their  self-confidence 
severely  shaken.  It  is  a  faith  which  plain  souls  immune 
from  wrong  or  innocent  of  guilt  take  for  a  hermitage.  It 
was  acquired  by  no  taste  of  life's  last  tragedy,  no  real 
experience  that  challenged  the  justice  of  God  ;  hence  it  is 
strange  to  the  moral  soul's  last  victory  in  the  Cross.  It 
may  be  the  faith  of  people  who  take  much  culture,  but  never 
grow  up,  never  pass  beyond  a  pietist  or  an  aesthetic  religion. 
It  is  due  to  a  sheltered  existence,  a  happy  temperament, 
a  limited  knowledge  of  life's  bitterness  and  wickedness,  and 


VI.]       FAILURE  OF  CHURCH  AS  INTERNATIONAL         99 

no  knowledge  at  all  of  our  own  damnability.  Nothing  is 
to  be  said  against  such  people  until  they  propose  their  tjrpe 
of  religion  as  standard  for  Christian  faith,  or  definitive  for 
the  Gospel's  crucial  relation  to  the  world.  That  would  be  a 
folly  only  matched  by  that  of  insisting  at  the  other  extreme 
that  every  Christian  should  pass  through  the  tragic  ex- 
perience of  a  Luther.  The  weakness  of  the  more  idyllic 
type  comes  to  light  in  the  great  crisis.  When  a  sudden  crash 
brings  such  people  face  to  face  with  tragedy  in  its  ghastliest 
and  most  inhuman  forms,  a  faith  which  was  only  humane 
or  serene  in  its  note  is  apt  to  give  way.  It  had  but  a 
divine  atmosphere  rather  than  a  divine  foundation.  That 
the  greatest  and  cruellest  war  in  the  world  should  take 
place  between  the  two  nations  for  which  evangelical 
Christianity  has  done  most,  and  to  which  its  history  owes 
most,  would  be  serious  for  that  form  of  faith  if  the  Roman 
form  had  been  capable  of  rising  to  the  moral  opportunity 
and  taken  the  occasion  to  protest.  It  is  a  staggering  blow 
to  a  faith  that  grew  up  in  a  long  peace,  a  high  culture,  a 
shallow  notion  of  history,  society,  or  morality,  and  a  view 
of  religion  as  but  a  divine  blessing  upon  life  instead  of  a 
fundamental  judgment  and  regeneration  of  it.  It  is  fatal 
to  the  piety  of  pony  carriage,  shaven  lawn,  or  sesthetic  tea. 
Such  an  experience  as  the  present  cannot  but  mean  very 
much  for  the  whole  public  conception  of  the  Church's  word 
and  function  in  the  world.  Can  the  Church  give  the 
ravaged  and  bewildered  world  a  theodicy  equal  in  power  to 
the  challenge  ?  Or  is  its  own  faith  but  staggering  on  to 
its  goal,  with  many  falling  out  to  die  by  the  way  ?  Is  its 
God  justified  in  expecting  the  trust  and  the  control  of  a 
world  which  He  has  allowed  to  get  into  such  a  state  ? 
Has  He  gone  deeper  than  its  tragedy  ?  Is  the  Cross  He 
bore  really  a  greater  tragedy  and  monstrosity  than  war  ? 
The  war  is  a  greater  misery  and  curse  than  we  know, 
greater  than  we  have  imagination  to  realise — even  if  we 
had  more  facts  for  imagination  to  work  on.     Are  we  quite 


100  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

sure  that  it  is  a  greater  cross  to  God  than  to  us,  that  it  is 
but  a  part  of  the  tragic  and  bloody  course  of  history  whose 
sword  has  pierced  through  His  own  heart  also,  and  that 
His  Redemption  still  is  in  command  of  all,  and  His  Kingdom 
sure  ?  His  insight  misses  nothing  of  all  the  facts  and  His 
hohness  none  of  the  horror  ;  does  it  unhinge  Him  ?  Or  is 
the  Word  of  His  Cross  a  vaster  salvation  than  we  dream, 
who  are  blinded  by  fears  and  tears,  and  whose  conscience 
is  not  equal  to  conceiving  either  the  enormity  or  the 
salvation  ?  Are  the  most  prompt  to  speak  the  most 
penetrating  in  their  grasp  or  the  most  potent  in  their 
effect  ?  One  covets  in  wonder  the  faculty  of  simple  solu- 
tion, ready  advice,  and  sweeping  criticism  in  some. 

One  reads  appeals  made  sans  ghie  by  some  whose  measure 
of  the  situation  is  not  equal  to  their  good  intentions,  and 
who  even  give  the  impression  of  meeting  the  Atlantic  with 
a  mop.  We  come  across  machine-made  appeals  to  the 
Church  to  be  getting  ready  to  handle  the  situation  when  the 
war  is  ovar.  As  if  a  Church  which  could  not  prevent  its 
coming  about  would  have  much  effect  on  the  awful  situa- 
tion when  it  is  done  !  If  the  Churches  so  little  gauged  the 
civilisation  which  they  had  allowed  to  grow  up,  and  which 
carried  the  war  in  its  womb,  are  they  more  likely  to  grasp 
the  case  when  the  moral  confusion  is  worse.  If  they  were 
so  impotent  before,  how  are  they  going  to  be  more  powerful 
now  ?  \Miat  new  source  of  strength  have  they  tapped  ? 
If  the  Church  left  such  a  war  possible,  what  encourages  us 
to  think  that  it  will  discover  the  radical  method  by  which 
'  a  recurrence  of  these  experiences  may  be  rendered  im- 
possible '  ?  Democratic  control  !  Who  or  what  is  con- 
trolling or  instructing  the  democracy  ?  The  ideologues  ? 
A  parliament  of  blue  birds  !  If  '  it  has  been  shown  how 
inadequate  the  influence  of  the  Churches  has  been  to 
restrain  the  forces  of  international  strife,'  it  is  not  because 
the  Churches  have  been  inactive.  They  have  been  active 
even  to   bustle,  not   to  saj'  fuss.      Is   there  something 


VI.]       FAILURE  OF  CHURCH  AS  INTERNATIONAL       101 

wrong  or  inept  in  the  rear  of  their  activity,  in  the  matter 
of  it,  in  their  mental  purview,  spiritual  message,  and  moral 
power.  And  is  it  more  than  fumbling  with  the  subject  to 
indulge  in  platform  platitudes  about  '  wielding  a  universal 
influence  over  the  actions  not  onl}^  of  individuals  but  of 
the  whole  community  of  nations.'  This  kind  of  speech 
does  something  to  depreciate  the  value  of  language,  and 
to  lighten  the  moral  coinage. 

The  Gospel  is  not  primarily  and  offhand  a  message  of 
peace  among  men,  but  of  peace  among  men  of  goodwill. 
If  the  amateur  advisers  of  the  Church  will  realise  that  its 
first  work,  which  carries  all  else  with  it,  is  not  to  lubricate 
friction  but  to  create  among  men  that  goodwill,  to  revise 
and  brace  the  belief  which  has  failed  to  do  it,  to  think  less 
of  uniting  the  Church  and  more  of  piercing  to  a  deep  Gospel 
that  will ;  if  they  will  distrust  the  bustling  forms  of  activity, 
the  harder  beating  of  the  old  drums,  the  provision  of  ever 
more  buns  and  beverages  ;  if  they  will  court  more  the 
silent,  searching,  hateful  regenerations  that  transform 
conduct,  private  and  public,  by  a  transformation  of  the 
faith  that  breeds  Christian  love  and  saves  it  from  mere 
fraternity  or  comradeship — then  they  will  be  doing  more 
than  all  the  press,  platforms,  societies,  or  crusades  can  to 
aid  the  Church  to  acquire  the  moral  influence  it  has  con- 
fessedly lost.  It  is  not  clear  that  the  minds  whose  words 
I  quote  believe  in  a  judgment  more  than  formally.  It 
is  not  certain  that  they  have  real  insight  into  its  moral 
meaning  and  function.  Judgment  does  not  stir  us  up 
bravely  to  new  activity  till  it  has  set  us  down  humbly 
to  new  inquiry  as  to  the  causes  of  the  old  failure,  as 
to  the  purpose  and  method  of  God  which  we  have  so 
failed  to  grasp.  The  Church  reared  the  nations  but  it  is 
not  able  to  control  them  for  the  Kingdom  of  God.  Why  ? 
What  is  missing  in  its  message  for  adult  peoples  ?  Much 
political  speculation  is  afloat  as  to  the  settlement  among 
the  nations  after  the  war — most  of  it  without  data,  and 


102  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

most  of  it  leaving  entirely  out  of  account  the  most  urgent 
matter  of  all,  the  matter  of  a  real  international  power,  in- 
tegrating the  peoples  with  moral  and  not  merely  political 
force.  This  is  the  place  the  Church  should  fill.  If  the 
Roman  Church  could  do  it,  we  need  not  mind  the  Romish- 
ness  of  it,  which  can  be  dealt  with  otherwise.  But  the 
Roman  Church  is  itself,  by  its  curiaHst  ambitions,  too 
much  one  of  the  worldly  powers  to  mediate  between  them. 
It  is  too  much  of  an  empire  for  such  emprise.  And  the 
other  Churches  are  either  too  much  nationalised,  or 
too  much  rationalised,  or  too  much  sectarianised,  or  too 
atomic,  and  all  too  much  divided,  to  possess  this  moral 
influence  over  and  between  the  peoples,  and  to  provide,  not 
merely  an  arrangement,  but  an  authority  to  give  it  effect. 
To  repair  this  impotence  is  the  first  duty  of  the  Church. 
And  it  simply  shows  an  inability  to  gauge  the  situation  to 
speak  of  the  Church  getting  ready  for  influential  action 
after  the  war.  The  statesmen  will  pay  no  attention  to  it. 
Nor  should  they,  till  it  put  its  own  house  in  order,  realise 
anew  its  Gospel,  and  acquire  from  its  own  neglected  re- 
sources the  moral  dignity  and  judgment,  bold,  serene,  and 
august,  which  would  save  it  from  the  busybodies  and  tittle- 
bats to  become  the  conscience  of  the  world. 

Nothing  has  more  struck  some  than  the  lack  of  due  and 
public  reference  to  the  Kingdom  of  God  as  the  interest  that 
any  Christian  nation  must  supremely  serve  for  its  per- 
manent place  in  Humanity.  We  of  this  country  have  in- 
deed much  to  answer  for.  Some  of  our  greatest  leaders  and 
policies  have  been  but  pagan.  Much  of  our  conduct  is  still. 
But  we  remember  that  twice  we  have  saved  the  liberty  of 
the  world — ^in  the  Armada,  and  at  Waterloo.  Have  we 
become  unworthy  to  do  it  again  ?  We  sent  forth  the  great 
free  people  of  the  West.  There  are  those  w^ho  think  that 
Britain's  record  in  such  things  as  Slave  Emancipation, 
CathoHc  Emancipation,  the  emancipation  of  the  workman, 
the  woman,  and  the  child ;   in  the  self-denying  ordinance 


VI.]       FAILURE  OF  CHURCH  AS  INTERNATIONAL       103 

taking  effect  in  the  government  of  India  by  way  of  atone- 
ment for  its  acquisition  ;  in  the  treatment  of  South  Africa 
since  the  Boer  War,  and  especially  of  our  enemies  there  (a 
treatment  of  which  no  other  country  than  England  was 
capable) — I  say  there  are  those  who  think  that  such  and 
other  like  things  show  a  growing  repentance  which  only 
prigs  could  call  Pharisaism,  and  a  moral  power  which  only 
pagans  would  call  quixotic.  These  things  place  us  in 
another  class,  so  far  as  God's  Kingdom  goes,  from  a  nation- 
ahsm  which  is  ostentatiously  outside  moral  or  humane  re- 
gards, and  is  abetted  by  its  Church  in  their  neglect.  We 
have  at  least  begun  to  reverse  our  engines.  The  cause  of 
the  weaker  nations  has  often  owed  us  much.  And  if  in  the 
dark  races  our  trade  has  been  known  to  exploit  and  cajole, 
our  Government  has  stepped  in  to  protect  and  save.  If  we 
remember  Bismarck  and  the  falsified  telegram,  let  us  not 
forget  CUve  and  the  false  treaty — except  to  reflect  that 
Clive  was  not  a  national  agent  but  the  servant  of  a  trading 
company,  and  by  the  House  of  Commons  was  disgraced. 

Nor  have  we  as  a  nation  quite  failed  that  word  of  God's 
truth  and  grace  for  which  He  cares  above  the  fate  of 
nations  or  the  spread  of  culture.  If  there  be  a  kingdom 
coming  with  all  God's  might  to  rule  the  earth,  then,  as 
nations  go,  Britain,  by  God's  grace,  has  done  more  for  it 
than  most.  We  are  at  least  on  the  way  to  serve  God's 
Kingdom  rather  than  extend  our  own.  And  this  is  our 
only  ground  of  patriotic  prayer  ;  which  means  patriotic 
humility,  and  some  true  compunction  for  what  does  not 
raise  us  above  gross  national  egoism.  We  can  pray  for 
victory  as  a  means  to  continue  a  service  to  that  Kingdom 
which  other  nations  have  not  yet  given,  and  which  cannot 
be  given  by  mere  aloofness,  and  neutrality,  and  a  sense  of 
moral  superiority. 

And  yet,  and  yet.  The  present  judgment  is  one  upon  a 
whole  egoist  and  godless  civilisation,  of  which  we  also  are 
a  part,  and  whose  end  is  pubUc  madness.    We  too  are  not 


104  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

immune  from  the  spirit  of  worldly  Imperialism,  of  non- 
moral  Nationalism,  of  passionate  Mammonism,  of  I\lili- 
tarism,  of  the  ideals  of  the  Christless  world  masking  often 
in  a  religious  guise.  And  who  can  tell,  when  all  is  balanced 
in  the  scales  of  God,  whether  we  are  clean  enough  to  hope 
to  be  continued  in  the  service  and  course,  which  some  hoped 
we  had  begun  to  lead,  for  His  Kingdom  on  Earth.  Let 
us  speak  of  serving  and  not  of  deserving.  Certain  it  is 
that,  if  the  Kingdom  of  God  be  the  active,  historic,  moral, 
and  withal  mystic  and  eternal  thing  the  New  Testament 
reveals,  such  neglect  of  it  as  modern  society  shows,  and 
such  repudiation  of  it  as  German  nationality  has  deliberately 
made,  must  mean  a  judgment  which  our  whole  godless 
civilisation  must  feel,  however  we  distribute  the  guilt. 
'  Both  good  and  bad  endure  one  scourge,  not  because  they 
are  guilty  of  one  disordered  life,  but  because  they  do  both 
too  much  affect  this  transitory  life  ;  not  in  like  measure  but 
both  together.'     (Augustine,  City  of  God,  i.  6.) 

But  this  is  a  long  excursion,  not  to  say  alarm.  My 
point  was  that  even  the  Church's  grasp  of  the  great  moral 
teleology  of  history  was  not  commanding ;  that  it  did  not 
realise  the  sovereignty  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  for  history  ; 
that  even  where  this  was  believed,  it  was  too  much  mixed 
with  pagan  or  humanist  conceptions  supremely  to  serve 
the  purpose  of  God.  And  this  because,  owing  to  the 
Fatherhood  ousting  the  Atonement,  and  the  genial  sub- 
merging the  holy,  salvation  is  not  grasped  in  moral  terms, 
as  the  theodicy  of  God,  or  His  self-justification  in  right- 
eousness, but  only  as  a  rescue  from  certain  ills.  It  is 
understood  egoistically  with  man  as  centre  and  not  God. 
Desperate  diseases,  I  have  said,  require  desperate  remedies. 
Extreme  crises  call  for  principles  that  may  well  seem 
extravagant  to  our  peaceful  hours.  And  there  are  plenty 
that  will  think  it  extreme  to  extravagance,  and  even  to 
absurdity,  when  it  is  suggested  that  the  first  business  of 


VI.]       FAILURE  OF  CHURCH  AS  INTERNATIONAL       105 

the  Church  to  find  its  way  in  this  world  is  to  go  back  and 
recover  its  footing  in  another,  to  return  and  readjust  its 
compass  at  the  Cross,  to  rise  above  both  the  precepts  and 
the  principles  Christ  taught  to  the  power  He  put  forth 
there  for  the  world's  regeneration,  and  to  recover  a  Chris- 
tian ethic,  not  interim  but  final,  there — at  the  seat  of 
Christian  judgment  unto  moral  reconciliation.  Is  there 
any  section  of  the  Church  that  does  not  need  to  learn 
more  deeply  that  the  site  of  God's  supreme  revelation  is 
not  in  the  order  of  the  world  but  in  its  crisis ;  that  its 
nature  is  for  the  conscience  not  evolution  but  revolution ; 
that  it  does  not  consecrate  a  natural  ethic  so  much  as 
redeem  it ;  that  by  a  new  creation  the  Cross  is  both  the 
foundation  and  the  crisis  of  the  whole  moral  world ;  that 
it  was  a  tragedy  greater  and  more  searching  than  any 
war  ;  and  that  it  is  the  creative  source  of  the  new  morality, 
the  new  Humanity  ?  It  is  a  far  more  free,  flexible,  and 
powerful  ethic  that  is  created  by  the  new  life  of  Christ, 
the  Redeemer,  than  that  promoted  by  the  new  precept 
of  Christ  the  Seer. 

This  sounds  like  saying  that  a  theological  revision  is  the 
one  thing  the  Church  needs  to  regain  control  of  the  world. 
Well,  there  is  a  sense  in  which  that  is  absurd;  but  in  the 
deepest  sense  it  is  true,  supremely  true.  God's  answer  to 
the  world  is  to  a  world  morally  desperate,  to  the  bankrupt 
conscience  of  the  world.  It  is  a  dogmatic  answer,  as  the 
way  of  conscience  must  be,  which  is  the  way  of  the  moral 
imperative.  Thou  shalt  love.  It  is  an  answer  to  our 
deepest  need  and  not  to  our  eager  mind.  It  is  certainly 
theological,  though  it  is  not  necessarily  systematic.  It  is 
the  saving  answer  of  the  holy  to  the  sinless.  And  it  is 
much  more  than  either  simple  or  sweet.  '  By  terrible 
things  in  righteousness  dost  Thou  answer  us,  0  God  of 
our  Salvation.' 

Many  current  conceptions  of  the  Cross  of  Christ  (both 
orthodox  and  heterodox)  do  not  give  it  its  due  place  as 


106  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

the  creative  focus  of  the  moral  world,  and  therefore  as  the 
rightful  and  the  real  ruler  of  the  course  of  history.  It  does 
not  appear  as  at  once  the  solution  and  the  destruction  of  the 
world's  moral  anomalies.  In  current  belief  there  is  a  natural 
ethic  and  there  is  a  Christian  in  a  parallelism ;  and  between 
them  the  conscience  comes  to  the  ground  distracted  and 
unsure.  The  latter — the  Christian — ^is  more  or  less  optional, 
but  the  former  is  held  to  be  vital  for  character  and  society. 
Hence  the  Christian  morality  is  but  one  section  of  a  divided 
soul.  It  is  not  the  Church  only  that  is  divided  ;  our  con- 
science is.  Our  eye  is  not  single.  And  therefore  we 
cannot  acquire  the  moral  momentum  necessary  for  a 
Christian  control  of  great  public  issues.  The  centre  of  our 
religion  is  one  thing,  that  of  our  morals  another.  We  serve 
two  masters.  The  great,  the  ecumenical  morality  is 
robbed  of  the  sanction  of  faith  and  elan  of  eternity. 
And  the  great,  the  absolute,  religion  is  demoralised.  The 
Kingdom  of  God  is  treated  as  an  interest  which  does  not 
concern  nations,  but  only  missions  and  philanthropies. 
Policy  may  remain  pagan  if  religion  stands  by  with  ambu- 
lances, lenitives,  opiates.  The  Cross  has  for  the  heart  a 
securing  (I  will  not  say  always  a  saving)  and  consohng 
power,  but  it  is  not  in  the  same  position  for  active  life. 
It  belongs  to  personal  religion  only,  and  chiefly  to  what 
might  be  called  the  night  side  of  that.  It  has  the  vesper- 
tinal  note.  It  is  not  for  political  or  business  affairs.  It 
has  not  the  dimensions  of  history.  The  Cross  is  not  felt 
to  be  the  source  of  the  et^:iial  theodicy  of  time,  the 
answer  to  human  sin,  wrong  and  misery,  of  a  self -justifying 
God.  Whereas  if  He  spared  not  His  own  Son,  all  that 
seems  merciless  in  the  history  of  the  world  is  less  merciless 
than  that,  which  is  the  shutting  up  of  all  men  to  mercy 
that  neither  falters  nor  repents. 

As  I  am  in  some  hope  that  these  words  may  be  read  by 
my  fellow-ministers,  especially  by  the  younger  men  amongst 


VI.]       FAILURE  OF  CHURCH  AS  INTERNATIONAL       107 

them,  I  have  allowed  myself  to  use  some  technical  terms — 
although  not  without  explanation  in  their  immediate 
vicinity.  Among  such  terms  are  the  words  anthropo- 
centric  and  theocentric,  whose  meaning,  I  trust,  I  have 
not  left  obscure.  They  mean,  much  and  very  much,  for 
our  present  frame  of  mind.  Anthropocentric  religion 
means  egoist  religion.  It  is  religion  whose  God  re- 
volves on  man.  This  has  much  social  meaning.  The 
state  of  a  society  is  always  chiefly  and  radically  due  to 
its  religion  ;  and  I  have  been  suggesting  that  the  religion 
of  current  society  has  come  to  a  serious  pass  and  a  day  of 
judgment,  because  it  has  become  anthropocentric,  because 
it  caters  to  individual  or  racial  egoism,  because  it  has 
come  to  regard  God's  love  as  the  greatest  asset  of  man 
instead  of  man's  trustful  obedience  as  the  supreme  worship 
and  due  of  God.  It  has  come  to  regard  God  as  the  patron 
of  certain  nations  instead  of  viewing  all  the  nations  as 
vassals  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  Or  the  Kingdom  of  God 
is  understood  as  if  He  were  the  perpetual  president  and 
trustee  of  a  human  republic  ruled  by  democratic  ideas  of 
which  He  has  charge.  The  whole  of  civilisation  has  carried 
this  egoist  note  into  its  religion,  in  so  far  as  it  remains 
religious  and  thinks  of  God  at  all.  And,  where  it  has 
ceased  to  be  religious,  it  is  partly  because  this  note  is  in- 
capable of  holding  and  ruling  so  great  a  power  as  man  now 
feels  himself  to  be.  If  society  is  not  duly  religious,  it  is 
largely  because  its  type  of  religion  is  unable,  from  its 
nature,  to  establish  itself  in  command.  All,  as  I  say, 
comes  back  to  the  type  of  religion.  The  kind  of  religion  is 
responsible  for  the  ignoring  of  religion.  A  religious  type 
which  has  abused,  trivialised,  and  therefore  desecrated,  the 
idea  of  love  by  dropping  from  it  the  ideas  of  majesty, 
sovereignty,  and  judgment,  is  not  one  which  can  expect 
to  keep  the  egoism  of  lusty  man  in  its  due  place.  A  visita- 
tion of  this  royal  Lord  was  well  due.  Nothing  deserves 
or  needs  judgment  so  much  as  the  neglect  and  contempt  of 


108  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

judgment.  And  the  only  stable  footing  for  any  society  is 
the  theocentric  note  which  first  glorifies  God  and  hallows 
His  Name. 

So  I  will  put  another  shade  of  interpretation  upon  the 
word  theocentric  ;  I  will  say  that  it  means  the  absolute 
supremacy  of  the  holy.  The  bane  of  modem  and  ciu-rent 
religion  is  in  the  practical  loss  of  the  idea  so  closely  identified 
with  Love's  might,  majesty,  judgment,  and  glory — the 
idea  of  the  holy.  Either  it  is  lost,  or  there  is  substituted 
for  the  moral  meaning  of  it  the  aesthetic,  and  for  the  ethical 
the  seemly  ;  so  that  the  response  is  but  reverence  instead 
of  real  worship,  attrition  instead  of  repentance,  an  extreme 
regard  to  religious  decorum  and  good  form  (in  the  conduct 
of  services,  for  instance),  but  no  equal  regard  for  the  type 
and  tone  of  life.  There  is  not  an  equal  regard  for  the  way 
of  fife  which  keeps  at  its  centre  the  holy  as  moral  passion 
and  mystic  conscience,  as  the  searching  righteousness 
which  enthrones  God's  love  and  destroys  guilt  in  grace. 
I  have  seen  congregations  visibly  relax  attention  when  the 
preacher  began  to  speak  of  the  holiness  of  God.  And  the 
root  of  this  error,  which  taints  and  flattens  the  whole  field 
of  religion,  is  the  abeyance  of  an  atonement  as  the  founda- 
tion of  our  faith,  the  atmosphere  of  our  worship,  and  the 
principle  of  our  life.  It  comes  to  be  treated  as  a  theo- 
logical arrangement  in  sequel  to  the  Incarnation,  instead  of 
being  the  very  nature,  focus  and  function,  of  the  Incarna- 
tion. This  means,  as  I  have  said,  that  the  moral  is  post- 
poned to  the  metaphysical  or  the  miraculous,  and  the 
whole  tone  of  Christian  life  falls  into  that  deadly  tune. 
The  one  meaning  of  an  atoning  Cross  is  the  securing  and 
establishing  of  God's  holy  and  righteous  judgment  through- 
out the  moral  world  to  its  victory  in  love — His  bringing 
forth  judgment  to  such  victory.  It  is  the  consummation 
of  the  holy  conscience  of  God  in  the  eternal  action  of  love 
which  incessantly  creates  a  moral  universe.  If  such  an 
atonement  become  otiose  to  our  faith  (as  is  increasingly 


VI.]       FAILURE  OF  CHURCH  AS  INTERNATIONAL       109 

the  case),  the  note  of  the  holy,  i.e.  of  the  moral,  must 
fade  from  it ;  and  we  are  left  with  Httle  bej^ond  a  piety 
either  aesthetic,  mystic,  or  sentimental,  but  too  easy  for 
judgment,  too  feeble  for  the  control  of  civilisation,  and  fit 
only  to  become  a  branch  of  its  culture.  And  the  man  of 
mere  culture  is  shut  out  from  the  best  it  is  in  him  to  be. 

It  is  to  the  religion  of  an  age,  that  is,  to  its  deep  moral 
theology,  that  we  must  go  back  for  the  explanation  of  what 
befalls  the  age — it  is  not  to  its  mere  morality.  The  chief 
failure  of  Christianity  is  indeed  a  moral  failure,  a  failure  to 
become  a  guide  for  modern  society,  a  curb  and  a  cure  for 
its  godless  egoism.  But  the  root  of  the  failure  goes  deep 
into  a  very  spiritual  kind  of  morality.  The  source  and 
sublimate  of  the  moral  is  the  holy,  which  in  God's  right- 
eous love  is  calling  to  man's  warm  conscience,  to  his  moral 
heart,  and  calling  for  the  whole  man,  the  whole  soul,  the 
whole  personality,  and  not  merely  a  faculty  of  it,  nor  for 
its  behaviour.  It  calls  for  the  response  known  as  faith, 
in  which  the  personahty  assigns  itself  to  the  grace  of  the 
Holy  in  an  act  of  committal  which  is  holy  as  He  is,  and 
which  has  all  actual  sanctity  latent  in  it,  and  all  conduct. 
The  act  of  each  moment  slumbers  in  the  life  of  the  doer 
seen  whole  as  one  compendious  act.  Such  is  the  religion 
that  answers  Christian  revelation.  It  is  one  compendious 
Act,  into  which  the  whole  personality  goes,  responsive  in 
kind  to  the  one  eternal  Act  in  which  the  whole  person  of 
the  Revealer  takes  standing  effect  as  Redeemer.  All  the 
best  history  of  the  Church  was  latent  in  the  Act  of  its 
salvation  ;  and  all  the  best  in  personal  history  and  char- 
acter lies  hid  in  the  act  of  faith  wherein  we  pass  from  death 
to  life.  But  nothing  is  more  conspicuous  in  the  popular 
Christianity  now  being  shocked  to  its  senses  than  the  loss  of 
the  sense  of  the  holy  God  amid  the  fair  humanities  of  new 
religion,  and  the  corresponding  loss  from  faith  of  the  sense 
that  it  is  the  grand  and  inclusive  moral  act  of  the  person- 
ality; losses  both  which  are  vainly  veiled  by  the  mysticism 


no  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [CH. 

that  soothes  so  many,  it  is  a  loss  that  follows  the  retire- 
ment from  Christian  interest  of  the  idea  of  a  real  Atone- 
ment, and  the  decay  of  the  tj^^De  of  faith  centring  round  it, 
i.e.  the  faith  of  the  Cross  as  being,  first  and  foremost,  an 
offering  of  obedience  to  the  holy  will  and  judgment  of  God 
therein  hallowed.  God  so  loved  the  world,  we  read,  that 
He  gave  His  Son  as  a  propitiation  to  His  own  holiness. 
He  gave  His  holy  Self  in  His  Son.  But  God  so  loved  the 
world,  we  are  now  taught,  that  He  was  not  going  to  let 
His  holiness  interfere  with  its  salvation.  He  had  means  to 
hush  that  holiness,  or  salve  it,  but  we  should  not  speak 
of  satisf5dng  it.  Satisfaction  is  obsolete  theology.  At 
any  rate  He  took  it  less  seriously  than  His  pity.  But 
surely  that  is  a  non-moral  creed,  one  which  is  but  sympa- 
thetic, one  therefore  which  must  issue  in  an  immoral 
society,  first  dehghtful  then  debased.  Room  must  be 
made  for  a  real  judgment  in  any  social  salvation.  It  is 
quite  inadequate  to  seek  to  fill  from  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  the  moral  vacuity  which  is  left  in  the  Cross  when 
the  Atonement  there  to  a  holy  God  has  been  taken  away. 
Yet  this  is  what  current  Christianity,  with  its  centre  on 
Incarnation  and  its  plan  with  two  natures  rather  than  wills, 
tends  to  do.  And  it  is  why  it  is  socially  so  sterile ;  it  is 
ethically  too  inert  and  aesthetic.  This  atoning  salvation 
is  the  only  one  that  intrinsically  moralises  the  soul  itself 
by  tuning  it  to  the  holy  in  the  act  of  its  rescue,  and  does 
not  have  morality  as  a  mere  sequel.  And  it  is  this 
moralising  of  the  soul,  behind  all  conduct  or  sentiment, 
that  needs  to  be  restored,  if  religion  is  to  regenerate  conduct 
or  society.  We  need  for  society  a  religion  that  recreates 
the  conscience,  and  does  not  simply  enlighten  or  stimulate 
it.  Do  not,  therefore,  show  up  the  inconsistencies  of 
Christendom.  Any  youth  can  do  that.  Bear  with  all  your 
strength  on  the  centre  of  the  soul  where  conduct  rises  and 
inconsistency  fades.  Turn  all  the  moral  creativeness  of 
this  Cross  on  that  point.     Bear  upon  the  Christian  regenera- 


VI.]       FAILURE  OF  CHURCH  AS  INTERNATIONAL       111 

tion  of  the  conscience  as  the  organ  of  the  holy  love,  and 
therefore  as  the  saviour  of  society  from  the  unholy  egoism 
of  prosperity.  Bear  in  on  the  public  a  Gospel  that  leaves 
a  man  with  nothing  to  offer  or  say  before  a  holy  God,  yet 
possessing  all  things  in  His  holy  grace.  Do  it  with  all  the 
resources  of  culture  and  knowledge,  with  a  generous  heart 
and  creed.  But  do  it.  The  moral  centre  and  future  of 
society  hes  in  the  Cross  of  a  holy  Christ. 

That  is  the  one  thing  morally  needful.  It  is  the  true 
line  of  moral  reconstruction  for  Christianity  at  least.  Yet 
there  is  a  form  of  earnest  religion  which  feels  and  is  deeply 
Christian  but  which  does  not  really  rise  above  ethic  and 
ethical  criticism  in  its  outlook  on  society.  There  is  a  type 
of  pious  reformer  who  is  somewhat  given  to  act  the 
censor  of  the  society  round  him,  without  the  stamp  of 
moral  passion,  and  without  such  a  grasp  of  the  Gospel  as 
makes  its  principle  more  incisive  than  the  preacher  can  be. 
The  impression  left  sometimes  is  that  of  a  censor  rather 
than  of  a  judgment.  And  there  is  much  risk,  on  this  line, 
of  developing  a  kind  of  critic  who,  even  if  we  abstained 
from  charging  him  with  spiritual  pride,  should  yet  betray 
pride's  accent  of  aloofness  and  self-will  without  pride's 
passion  or  power.  Such  criticism  would  have  moral 
interests  but  no  moral  insight,  spiritual  fervour  without 
discernment  of  spirits.  It  is  self-sure  if  not  self-righteous ; 
it  is  but  inchoate  as  an  apostle — a  disciple,  but  an  apostle 
not  yet.  The  temptation  for  such  is  great  to  describe 
the  inconsistencies  and  crudities  of  a  Christian  society  as 
Pharisaism,  without  any  historic  sense  of  what  Pharisaism 
really  was.  The  critic  of  Pharisaism  may  become  a 
Pharisee  without  knowing  it,  and  the  Pharisaic  type  of 
mind  is  too  egoist  for  a  theodicy. 

In  a  time  of  public  crisis  and  peril  the  Church  asks  herself 
if  she  is  in  any  way  to  blame  (it  is  mostly  too  late  then  for 
her  to  save).    xAnd  in  this  inquest  she  receives  much  help 


112  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [cH. 

There  are  plenty  of  people  ready  to  expose,  with  con- 
siderable fidelity,  with  qualified  sympathy,  and  with  much 
pubHcity,  the  anomalies  so  easy  to  find  in  a  lofty  religion 
that  covers  large  areas  of  people.  Now  we  should  not  fail 
to  recognise  in  the  prophetic  critic  a  great  gift  from  above, 
to  clear  us  of  cant  and  phlegm.  But  let  us  not  fail  also 
to  try  his  spirit,  to  discern  it,  and  to  criticise  the  critic  for 
the  authentic  note  and  judgment  of  the  moral  seer.  For 
impatience  of  evil  is  not  moral  judgment ;  indeed,  it  may 
destroy  it ;    '  saeva  indignatio  perturhahat  mentem.^ 

There  has  often  arisen  in  the  name  of  conscience  a  type  of 
reformer  whose  inspiration  is  unequal  to  his  task,  because  he 
is  more  the  censor  of  the  unapt  saints  than  the  prophet  of 
the  righteous  Lord.  With  the  candour  of  the  friend,  he 
may  be  without  the  kindness  of  the  brother ;  and  with 
the  mark  of  the  ideal,  he  may  be  without  the  note  of  the 
apostle.  He  lacks  the  stamp  of  moral  passion  in  the 
great  style,  moral  imagination,  the  gift  of  insight  into  the 
last  moral  reality,  or  such  a  grasp  of  principle  as  makes  it 
more  incisive  than  the  critic  is.  Such  pietist  criticism 
may  have  moral  fervour,  but  no  spiritual  discernment,  only 
sensibility.  Mobility  is  taken  for  penetration,  facihty  for 
real  familiarity  ;  and  the  sense  of  contrast  is  without  per- 
spective. Moral  zeal,  lost  to  a  just  sense  of  moral  values, 
was  very  early  seen  to  be  a  sjTnptom  of  moral  decay.  It 
had  no  power  to  understand  the  weightier  matters  of  the 
law,  nor  the  insight  that  appraises  moral  principles  in  a 
hierarchy  ;  it  had  not  the  flair  for  the  Kingdom  of  God  ; 
and  it  was  in  its  element  among  the  lapses  of  the  little. 

For  such  minds  it  is  not  hard  to  impale  a  particular 
public  scandal,  or  to  collate  several  sets  of  incongruities 
from  the  moral  life  of  a  society  which  is  only  becoming 
Christian — as  the  critic  himself  may  be  but  ethically  adol- 
escent. There  is  a  certain  amateur  ethic,  for  instance, 
with  more  taste  than  faculty  for  public  affairs,  which 
brackets  the  gross  sins  of  camps  in  a  parity  with  the  grisly 


VI.]       FAILURE  OF  CHURCH  AS  INTERNATIONAL       113 

sins  of  Cabinets,  deadlier  because  subtler.  It  dubs  as 
dishonest  the  society  which  admits  the  one  within  itself 
while  denouncing  the  other  elsewhere.  It  equates  the  non- 
respectable  sins  of  popular  instinct  heat  and  haste,  the 
vulgar  sins,  with  the  long,  calculated,  and  diabolic  wicked- 
ness of  moral  cynicism  in  the  high  places  of  genius  or 
position.  It  brings  to  one  level  sensual  and  spiritual  sin, 
sin  haunted  by  a  law  it  owns  and  sin  which  repudiates  the 
existence  of  a  law.  It  would  slay  ^\dth  equal  breath  the 
secret  indulgents  of  instinct  and  those  more  sinister  corro- 
sives who  have  been  public  idols  for  decades,  and  have  spent 
their  decent  lives  in  cunningly  seducing  one  nation  to  ravish 
another.  It  would  tell  us  that  because  of  the  recent 
substitution,  among  women,  workmen,  and  the  aristocracy, 
of  social  terrorism  for  constitutional  action,  therefore  it  is 
dishonest  to  be  so  indignant  about  '  frightfulness  '  from 
abroad.  And  if  such  slovenly  ethic  be  deprecated,  if  it  is 
urged  that  a  society  has  the  duty  while  lamenting  and  mend- 
ing the  one  to  denounce  and  destroy  the  other — this  is  still 
trounced  as  Pharisaism.  The  temptation  of  those  leonids 
who  give  way  to  that  mood  is  to  describe  all  the  incon- 
sistencies and  crudities  of  a  growing  society  as  Pharisaism. 
The  critics  who  never  grow  up  are  somewhat  prompt  with 
such  language.  And  it  is  freely  applied  to  our  part  in  the 
war.  Pharisaism  is  a  handy  word,  a  little  shopworn  now, 
but  with  many  effective  still  ;  for  we  all  hate  a  fraud.  But 
it  needs  to  be  used  with  some  care  if  it  is  to  be  more  than 
censorious  or  priggish. 

Pharisaism  was  not  in  its  inception  hypocrisy,  as  that 
word  is  promptly  understood.  It  was  a  sect  and  a  system 
which  led  there  at  the  long  last,  but  it  did  not  begin  there. 
It  did  not  begin  as  conscious  duplicity,  but  as  unconscious 
unreality,  as  a  disease  not  of  the  conscience  but  of  the  soul. 
It  is  not  an  ethical  complaint  but  a  religious.  The  Gospel 
judges  the  world,  but  it  was  the  religious  that  Jesus  judged. 
The  very  quarrels  of  religion,  the  divisions  in  the  Church, 


114  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

are  due  to  the  sound  conviction  that  nothing  can  be  so 
fatal  to  rehgion  as  wrong  rehgion.  Pharisaism  turned 
radically  on  the  religious  treatment  of  its  central  sanctity, 
and  not  on  the  moral  adjustment  of  conduct  to  principle. 
Its  malady  was,  first,  the  anthropocentrism  of  which  I 
have  spoken.  It  elevated  man  (or  a  nation)  and  exploited 
God.  It  had  use  for  God  only  in  so  far  as  He  was  com- 
mitted to  the  glorification  of  Israel.  And,  second,  as 
a  consequence  of  this,  it  courted  for  itself  the  eminence 
in  the  religious  community  which  it  claimed  for  that  com- 
munity in  mankind.  Its  note  was  not  first  false  religion 
but  superior  religion,  higher  spiritualit}^,  advanced  ethic. 
It  cherished  the  note  of  conscious  superiority  in  its  reli- 
gious style,  a  superiority  which  lay  not  in  repentance 
but  in  spiritual  attainment  and  a  company  of  choice  and 
separate  spirits.  So  it  became  unreal.  And  its  temper 
remains  to  this  day.  It  is  a  false  form  less  of  conduct 
than  of  sanctity.  It  is  less  inconsistent  conduct  than  self- 
conscious  sanctity,  which  takes  itself  as  seriously  as  its 
salvation.  A  touch  of  humour  would  sometimes  reduce 
it,  if  it  did  not  cure  it.  It  is  the  crime  of  a  religious 
society,  and  not  of  a  natural,  of  Church  rather  than  State, 
and  it  is  a  temptation  to  the  leaders  of  such  society 
especially.  It  besets  religious  coteries  and  sects.  And  it 
aims  there  at  special  spirituality  and  a  laboured  or  mannered 
holiness,  whether  in  the  way  of  observance  or  of  experience. 
It  is  not  moral  inconsistency,  therefore,  professing  one  thing 
and  living  another,  so  much  as  it  is  conscious,  superior, 
censorious,  and  therefore  si)urious  religion.  It  is  apt  to 
affect  those  better  spirits  who  covet  holiness  ;  and  it 
tends  to  attack  especially  those  who  have  laid  themselves 
out  to  be  spiritual  influences.  It  is  an  insidious  disease, 
and  not  a  devised  fraud.  It  can  be  more  deadly  than 
fraud,  since  it  is  less  easily  found  out ;  being  honest  self- 
delusion  about  reality,  about  God,  on  the  part  of  people 
who  take  religion  for  a  career  and  who  work  at  being  good. 


VI.]       FAILURE  OF  CHURCH  AS  INTERNATIONAL       115 

It  is  not  Dickens's  Pecksniff  but  George  Eliot's  Bulstrode 
(in  Middlemarch) .  But  then  Dickens  was  a  sentimental 
moralist  of  the  obvious  and  extravagant  type,  who  made 
hypocrisy  strut  for  our  amusement,  while  George  Eliot 
was  a  sympathetic  prophet,  who  got  inside  it,  and  let  us 
see  the  pitiful  growth  of  its  slow  perdition  for  our  warning. 
It  is  worst  among  the  earnestly  religious,  for  whom  re- 
ligion is  a  life  and  does  not  simply  fill  up  certain  gaps  in 
life.  It  was,  in  the  classic  form,  the  evisceration  of  re- 
ligion by  people  intensely  devoted  to  it,  people,  indeed, 
more  concerned  about  the  piety  of  their  religion  than  about 
the  truth  of  their  revelation,  people  engrossed  with  holiness 
but  spending  more  on  the  cultivation  of  their  own  than  on 
the  understanding  of  God's.  It  is  devoted,  subjective, 
and  even  egoist  piety,  at  the  cost  often  of  moral  judgment. 
It  could  even,  in  extreme  cases,  be  what  many  a  cloister 
has  seen — the  ambition  of  sanctity,  instead  of  the  habitual 
and  hearty  confession  of  repentance,  with  the  love  of  fellow- 
sinners  long  before  they  attain  to  saints.  It  is  in  danger, 
in  such  conditions,  of  substituting  elated  religion  for 
humble  faith,  visionary  exaltation  for  broken  trust,  calm 
eminence  for  kind  courtesy,  and  that  for  frank  fraternity. 
It  tends  to  take  spiritual  aptitude  for  evangelical  trust, 
and  to  overlay  the  work  of  the  holy  upon  the  conscience  by 
the  mystic  glamour  of  temperament,  or  the  aesthetic  spell 
of  religious  culture.  Perhaps  the  best  practical  commen- 
tary on  it  is  the  history  of  monasticism,  from  its  beginning 
in  earnest  spirituality,  through  strained,  then  through 
fantastic,  piety,  to  moral  erosion  and  collapse. 

Those  do  us  a  true  service,  therefore  (if  they  are  careful), 
who  warn  us  against  Pharisaism  ;  who  go  back  to  the  first 
Pharisaism,  to  discover  that  the  Antichrist  in  it  was 
deepened  by  the  Christianity  in  it ;  and  who  teach  us  that 
the  first  falsity  was  the  substitution  of  religion  for  God, 
of  spiritual  attainment  for  searching  humility  ;  of  an 
egoist  piety  for  a  s^Tupathetic  faith  with  the  self-distrust 


116  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

of  one  whose  foot  nearly  slips.  We  need  constantly  to  be 
told  that,  for  all  the  higher  purposes  of  religion,  quality  is  a 
greater  matter  than  intensity,  that  it  is  of  more  moment 
that  God's  name  should  be  hallowed  than  spread.  So,  if 
we  may  gather  up  the  best  teaching  on  the  subject,  we  note, 
first,  that  Pharisaism  is  a  religious  vice  rather  than  an 
ethical.  Second,  that  it  begins,  not  as  hypocrisy,  but  as 
unreality,  as  religious  unreaUty  which  (through  a  dread  of 
theology)  is  so  subjective  that  it  never  suspects  how  imreal 
it  is.  It  is  unconscious  humbug  long  before  its  issue  in 
obvious  quackery.  We  note,  third,  that  it  is  apt  to  attack 
the  spiritual  rather  than  the  average  man.  Its  bacillus 
thrives  rapidly  in  the  high  and  exposed  places  of  religion,  in 
eminent  Christians  (as  the  phrase  used  to  be).  Fourthly, 
the  attack  may  be  most  severe  in  these  unworldly  souls  who 
are  sensitive  to  a  Kingdom  of  God,  and  who  set  out  to  cul- 
tivate spiritual  influence  among  the  young  or  crude,  not  for 
love  of  power  but  as  a  lever  for  good.  Pharisaism  of  this 
kind  was  one  of  the  temptations  of  Christ  from  the 
best  rehgion  of  His  day.  '  Get  power  with  the  public  by 
religion  that  impresses  them  ;  then  use  it  for  a  great  reign 
of  righteousness.'  Such  people  are  not  self-seekers  in  the 
vulgar  sense.  They  do  not  fall  to  spiritual  pride,  which  is 
too  Satanic  and  thorough  for  their  natures,  but  to  what 
may  be  called  spiritual  '  side,'  with  pride's  accent  of  self- 
certainty,  remoteness,  pnd  de  haut  en  has,  but  without  its 
passion  or  power.  And,  fifthly,  as  it  seizes  on  the  religious, 
it  is  the  more  dangerous  with  those  who  take  their  religion 
most  seriously,  who  not  only  feel  the  spell  of  the  spiritual 
but  cultivate  it  as  some  writers  do  style.  The  result  may 
be  similar  too.  There  is  a  spiritual  preciosity — as  there  is 
a  literary — both  unreal,  and  both  on  the  slope  that  ends  in 
self-sophistication.  It  is  dangerous  to  cultivate  piety  for 
our  uplifting  when  we  need  to  be  acquainting  ourselves 
with  God  for  our  peace  ;  for  spirituality  is  much  easier  than 
repentance.     And  in  subjective  sanctity  we  are  thought 


VI.]       FAILURE  OF  CHURCH  AS  INTERNATIONAL       117 

by  men  to  be  doing  something,  whereas  we  seem  to  them 
but  theologising  when  we  are  lost  in  the  holiness  of  God ; 
and  then  it  takes  so  much  time.  Thus  it  is  that  we 
suffer  from  the  blague  about  the  need  of  religion  instead 
of  theology.  If  it  come  to  that,  the  Pharisees  were  more 
religious  than  the  first  disciples  ;  and  it  was  a  matter  of 
theology  that  separated  them  from  Christ.  They  did  not 
lack  the  sacrificial  spirit.  Like  Him,  they  were  quite 
ready  to  die  for  their  nation's  God.  But  they  had  a 
different  view  of  God  and  His  will.  They  were  experts 
and  veterans  in  sacrifice,  but  not  according  to  knowledge. 
They  worshipped  it  for  its  own  meritorious  sake.  The 
case  was  not  disobedience  on  one  side  and  obedience  on  the 
other  ;  it  was  a  question  of  the  kind  of  God  who  should 
receive  an  obedience  taken  seriously  on  both  sides.  They 
differed,  not  on  what  was  due  to  revelation,  but  on  what 
came  by  it. 

Pharisaism,  in  a  word,  was  Antichrist  because  it  was 
anthropocentric  religion.  For  it  God's  Kingdom  must 
glorify  Israel,  while  for  Christ  it  must  glorify  God.  Other 
nations  might  save  themselves,  God  alone  could  save 
Israel,  said  Christ.  God  does  not  wait  on  man's  aspira- 
tions or  ambitions,  man  is  there  to  worship  God's  glory. 
Christ  was  little  moved  by  a  religion  of  moral  excel- 
lence, such  as  many  a  Pharisee  successfully  pursued.  He 
was  all  for  a  religion  of  salvation,  in  which  the  penitent 
went  for  more  than  the  excellent.  And  the  faith  of  the 
Cross  means  that  history  is  not  run  solely  or  primarily 
in  the  interest  of  mere  moral  worth,  but  in  the  interest  of 
Redemption,  and  of  the  holy  judgment  that  goes  with 
redeeming  Love's  right  to  all  men,  not  its  mere  value  for 
them.  God  is  not  the  world's  great  asset  but  its  eternal 
Lord.  And  Pharisaism,  as  the  great  egoism,  makes  no 
theodicy  possible. 

To  move  the  centre  of  supreme  concern  from  God  to 


118  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

man  is  false  religion,  whose  nemesis  is  slow  but  sure. 
Whether  we  do  it  in  the  pursuit  of  personal  spirituality, 
public  influence,  or  public  prosperity,  yet  to  nurse  reputa- 
tion, to  cultivate  people  in  order  to  do  them  good,  instead 
of  doing  them  good  by  loving  them  for  God's  sake,  it  is 
to  surrender  along  with  veracity  the  idea  of  the  holy.  It 
often  entails  spiritual  overstrain,  restlessness,  and  vag- 
rancy. We  may  lose  the  power  of  the  holy  in  a  weak  ethic 
which  really  cuts  the  moral  nerve,  and  debases  charity  into 
a  saltless  sacrifice.  The  holy  has  no  meaning  apart  from 
the  conscience,  majesty,  and  kingship  of  the  righteous 
Father.  Nor  has  the  moral  any  ultimate  meaning  apart 
from  the  holy.  And  without  the  supremacy  of  the  moral 
interest  there  is  no  path  through  history,  no  teleology  of 
society,  no  theodicy.  Without  holiness  no  man  shall  see 
the  Lord  in  history.  To  make  the  development  of  man 
the  supreme  interest  of  God,  as  popular  Christianity  some- 
times tends  to  do,  instead  of  making  the  glory  of  God  the 
supreme  interest  of  man,  is  a  moral  error  which  invites 
the  only  treatment  that  can  cure  a  civilisation  whose 
religion  has  become  so  false — public  judgment.  It  is  of 
more  moment,  I  have  said,  that  God's  love  should  be 
hallowed  than  spread.  God  can  spare  us  no  judgment 
which  is  needful  tp  hallow  His  love,  and  lift  it  from  the 
fondness  of  a  blind  parent  to  the  power  which  moves  to 
His  end  the  earth,  the  heavens,  and  all  the  stars.  A 
society  whose  God,  in  whatever  kindness,  is  less  than 
holy  represents  in  the  end  a  godless  civilisation  ;  which 
must  sink  to  moral  hebetude,  not  to  say  moral  monstro- 
sity, even  amid  strong  passions  and  lively  affections ; 
with  a  fearful  looking  for  of  the  judgment  which  is  at 
once  the  moral  nemesis  and  the  gracious  cure.  Man's 
holiness  is  not  spiritual  eminence,  nor  mystic  remoteness, 
nor  religious  facility ;  it  is  moral  insight  and  practical 
experience  of  love's  miracle  of  majesty  and  mercy  com- 
bined only  in  an  atoning  Cross.     It  is  a  perception  of  the 


VI.]       FAILURE  OF  CHURCH  AS  INTERNATIONAL       119 

conscience,  and  it  acts  on  the  conscience  as  nothing  else 
does ;  it  is  therefore  especially  destined  for  pubHc  ethic  on 
the  scale  of  a  new  world.  Religion,  in  losing  the  note  of 
the  holy,  and  its  supremacy,  loses  the  note  of  authority, 
which,  in  the  end,  is  to  lose  all.  And  some  Churches  have 
quite  lost  it.  And  so  they  lose  men.  What  a  craving 
there  is  for  this  note,  how  far  the  sjmipathies  and  pieties 
which  bring  the  hour's  boon  are  from  satisfying  us,  is 
shown  by  the  extraordinary  rally  to  the  nation's  army  of 
our  youth,  which  the  Church  had  so  freely  lamented  its 
inability  to  capture  or  to  hold,  of  which  it  therefore  was 
apt  to  despair.  That  rush  to  the  ranks  is  not  due  to 
patriotism  alone,  but  partly  also  to  a  resentment  of  the 
dull  and  soulless  routine  of  the  egoist  civilisation  to 
whose  service  most  of  their  hours  were  bound  without 
scope  or  hope.  They  welcomed  a  devotion.  And,  without 
authority,  no  devotion.  The  passion  to  be  commanded, 
to  obey,  to  sacrifice  co-exists  with  the  passion  of  insubordi- 
nation and  rebellion.  Both  Jesuitism  and  the  Salvation 
Army  have  been  created  upon  the  recognition  of  this  fact. 
And  the  distinction  and  attraction  of  obedience  and  service 
has  been  a  great  recruiting  motive.  The  voluntary  devo- 
tion to  a  great  entity  like  country  has  done  something  to 
fill  the  moral  gap  left  by  the  subsidence  of  the  idea  of  a  holy, 
majestic,  commanding  God  from  the  heart  of  a  religion  of 
love,  and  by  the  disappearance  from  several  Churches  of  a 
machinery  of  obedience.  It  shows  how  the  personality, 
the  soul,  seeks,  for  its  own  dignity  and  completion,  more 
than  the  '  heart '  can  give  it.  '  Why,'  you  ask,  '  Why  does 
the  Church  not  Tvin  from  youth  the  devotion  that  the 
nation  wins  ? '  Partly  because  the  Church  as  popular  is  not 
offering  a  God  or  a  Christ  great  enough  to  command  life 
and  conscience,  and  therefore  to  tap  its  devotion,  but  only 
near  enough  to  promote  sympathy.  Partly  because  in 
some  of  its  forms  it  not  only  does  not  provide,  but  it  dis- 
courages, the  obedience  which  is  better  than 'sacrifice  and 


120  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

inspires  it.  We  have  been  trjdng  to  cultivate  S3rmpathy 
faster  than  we  provided  an  inspiration  of  sacrifice.  The 
old-fashioned  convert,  whose  conscience  played  the  chief 
part  in  his  change,  and  who  parted  with  himself  before  he 
sacrificed  his  enjoj^ments,  was  more  heroic  in  his  note.  A 
Gospel  of  Idnd  love  alone  defeats  its  own  end.  S3rmpathy 
alone  will  not  cure  for  the  soul  the  egoism  it  resents  in 
society,  sacred  or  profane.  And  its  obtrusion  may  repel 
the  manlier  breed. 

It  is  the  godlessness  of  civilisation  in  its  two  extremes 
of  humanism  and  savagery,  its  egoist  foundation  and  con- 
tent even  in  its  religion — the  outrunning  of  moral  progress 
by  civilised — that  is  the  source  of  its  present  downfall. 
And  no  theodicy  can  meet  the  situation  which  does  not  see 
that  the  root  of  the  trouble  is  in  some  fundamental  disloca- 
tion in  the  whole  of  society,  however  it  may  come  to  a  head 
in  a  particular  nation.  The  anomaly  is  not  that  a  God  of 
love  should  permit  such  things  as  we  see.  In  the  egoist 
conditions  of  Europe  and  of  civilisation  everywhere,  and 
with  a  God  of  ho\y  love  over  aU,  the  scandal  and  the 
stumbling  block  would  have  been  if  such  judgments  did 
not  come.  We  could  not  feel  the  world  was  in  righteous 
hands.  If  only  the  chief  culprits  were  the  chief  victims  ! 
But  they  are  well  entrenched  in  the  sense  of  power,  and 
even  of  justice.  There  is  sent  them  a  strong  delusion. 
The  worst  curse,  we  have  said,  is  not  conscious  hypocrisy, 
which  is  easily  seen  and  soon  found  out.  It  is  the  deadlier 
element  in  Pharisaism,  it  is  religious  superiority,  the  super- 
stition either  of  a  pious  elite,  or  a  chosen  and  monopoHst 
race,  such  as  the  Kaiser  holds  Germany  to  be.  It  is  the 
absolute  self-delusion  which  ends  in  moral  madness,  be- 
cause it  shrinks,  beyond  everything  else,  from  a  habitual 
self-reference  to  the  Cross  as  the  judgment-seat  of  Christ, 
and  a  constant  correction  there.  Christ's  servants,  and  not 
His  comrades,  we  are.  His  property  by  heavenly  purchase, 
and  not  simply  His  poor  relations  nor  His  weak  allies.     A 


VI.]       FAILURE  OF  CHURCH  AS  INTERNATIONAL       121 

religion  whose  ethic  is  not  founded  in  its  forgiveness,  which 
is  not  a  daily  repentance  but  a  constant  self-satisfaction, 
and  which  only  abets  by  sanction  the  passion  for  power  of 
unredeemed  man,  is  a  daily  invitation  of  judgment.  And 
we  are  now  learning  what  judgment  is.  We  have  de- 
scended into  hell. 


122  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 


CHAPTER  VII 

TELEOLOGY  ACUTE   IN   A  THEODICY 

The  faith  of  a  teleology  in  history  protects  us  from  the 
vagrancy  of  soul  which  dogs  the  notion  that  things  are 
but  staggering  on,  or  flitting  upon  chance  winds  over  a 
trackless  waste.  It  saves  us  from  the  timidity  which  so 
easily  besets  us  before  the  incalculable.  But  our  worst 
trouble  is  not  due  to  a  mere  tracklessness  in  the  course  of 
history.  That  is  too  negative  to  try  us  keenly.  We  are 
exposed  to  positive  assault.  The  iron  enters  our  soul. 
The  worst  question  rises,  and  the  chief  protest,  when  the 
disorder  in  the  world  touches  our  nerve  in  the  shape  of 
positive  pain,  evil,  or  guilt ;  when  our  personal  life  is 
deranged  by  that  alien  invasion,  or  is  crushed,  instead  of 
stayed,  by  our  connection  with  the  course  of  things  ;  when 
conscience  rises  in  protest  at  the  fate  of  the  good,  or  the 
falsity  of  ourselves.  Questions  then  come  home  about  the 
connection  of  evil  and  suffering,  sin  and  sorrow,  grief  and 
goodness.  Then  it  is  that  the  desire  for  a  teleology  quickens 
and  deepens  into  the  passion  for  a  theodicy.  Has  the  teleo- 
logy a  moral  end  ?  Is  God's  goodness  secure  ?  The 
teleology  of  things  is  congested  into  a  crisis  which  demands 
that  revelation  be  the  self- justification  of  God.  Is  the 
great  end  not  only  there  but  is  it  just,  and  does  it  justify 
the  dreadful  means  ?  Our  quest  for  a  divine  plan  becomes 
a  concern  for  the  divine  justice.  A  God  that  merely  hides 
Himself  may,  as  Bacon  saj^s,  be  but  playing  hide-and-seek 
with  His  children,  and  longing  to  be  found.     He  is  more 


vn.]  TELEOLOGY  ACUTE  IN  A  THEODICY  123 

tolerable  than  one  who  is  indifferent — much  more  tolerable 
than  one  who  seems  to  withdraw  offended  to  His  heavenly 
tent  when  His  creatures  most  need  Him  in  their  battle  ; 
or  who  even  from  His  invisible  retreat  shoots  casual  darts 
upon  them,  or  wraps  them  in  a  blight  without  sympathy 
or  justice.  The  last  demand  of  the  soul  is  Job's — that  God 
would  vindicate  his  ways  to  men.  We  are  more  concerned 
that  God  should  do  justice  to  Himself  than  even  to  our 
hopes.  For  the  time  at  least  the  religious  interest  of 
people  has  passed  away  from  God's  justification  of  man  ; 
it  is  all  to  the  good  therefore  that  it  should  fasten,  in  the 
growing  strain  of  life,  with  the  more  force  upon  His  justifi- 
cation of  Himself.  How  should  He  expect  us  to  trust 
Him,  for  instance,  after  a  war  like  this,  and  a  history  of 
the  race  in  keeping  with  it  ? 

If  our  problem  is  Job's,  the  historic  answer  has  now  gone 
much  further  than  what  he  received.  The  Cross  of  Christ 
has  come  and  gone  ;  and  we  do  not  simply  bow  with  Job 
under  a  sublime  majesty  more  sure  and  impressive  than  the 
mercy.  But  in  the  Cross  of  Christ  as  is  His  majesty 
so  is  His  mercy.  That  is  to  say.  He  is  gracious  with  all 
His  might,  and  not  in  an  arbitrary  interval  of  His  power. 
The  solution  there  to  the  question  of  a  teleology  is  not 
simply  a  tour  de  force  of  revelation  ;  it  is  a  moral  victory 
and  redemption  ;  it  is  the  moral  victory  which  recovered 
the  imiverse.  The  Vindicator  has  stood  on  the  earth.  It 
is  the  eternal  victory  in  history  of  righteousness,  of  holiness, 
of  the  moral  nature  and  character  of  God  as  Love.  It  is 
therefore  the  solution  also  to  the  teleological  question  in 
its  more  pointed  form,  as  to  a  theodicy.  It  justified  not 
man  merely  but  God.  The  divine  destiny  of  the  world 
was  not  simply  revealed  in  Christ  but  secured ;  and 
in  a  way  which  not  only  respected  the  holiness  of  God,  but 
put  it  into  action  and  leading  action.  The  solution  is 
equally  religious  and  moral,  as  the  Christian  idea  of  the 
holy  must  be.     It  is  evangelical,  with  the  note  of  guilt. 


124  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

tragedy  and  glory.  It  is  soteriological.  It  is  a  matter  of 
judging  grace,  and  of  grace  taking  judgment.  It  is  in  the 
faith  of  God  as  a  holy  Saviour,  and  our  deliverance  from 
guilt  in  His  Cross,  Judgment,  and  Resurrection.  God's 
justification  of  man  opens  our  eyes  to  His  justification  of 
Himself.  Both  are  one  and  the  same  act.  The  power  of 
God  unto  salvation  is  the  revelation  and  the  energy  of  the 
righteousness  of  God  (Rom.  i.  16-17).  It  is  holy  love  at 
work  in  final  judgment,  i.e.  in  the  rectification  of  all 
things.  The  Cross  of  Christ  creates  in  faith  the  assurance 
that  the  whole  course  of  the  world  which  entailed  it  is, 
before  everything  else,  the  explication  of  His  work — a  vast 
means  for  man's  separation  from  his  sin  and  union  with  his 
God.  And  thus  by  the  Will  and  Act  of  God  history  funda- 
mentally and  finally  serves  His  purpose  of  holy  love.  If  it 
all  seem  very  slow,  and  justice  seem  for  periods  even 
turned  backwards,  that  only  means  that,  since  we  do  not 
see  sin  as  God  sees  it,  we  have  misconceived  the  problem. 
Those  who  are  disappointed  with  the  social  success  of 
Christianity  must  challenge  the  action  of  any  beneficent 
power  in  history  to  the  same  extent.  But,  further,  it  is  not 
beneficence  but  holiness  that  makes  God  God,  and  pre- 
scribes His  action  with  the  moral  soul,  with  its  intracta- 
bility at  worst,  and  at  best  its  docility  instead  of  its 
repentance.  The  most  anomalous  thing,  the  most  poignant 
and  potent  crisis  that  ever  happened  or  can  happen  in  the 
world,  is  the  death  of  Christ ;  the  whole  issue  of  warring 
history  is  condensed  there.  Good  and  evil  met  there  for 
good  and  all.  And  to  faith  that  death  is  the  last  word 
of  the  holy  omnipotence  of  God.  There  is  nothing 
hid  from  the  light  of  His  grace  there,  and  nothing  out- 
side its  service,  its  ethic,  and  its  final  mastery.  The 
whole  world  is  re- constituted  in  the  Cross  as  its  last  moral 
principle,  its  key,  and  its  destiny.  The  Cross  is  at  once 
creation's  fatal  jar  and  final  recovery.  And  there  is  no 
theodicy  for  the  world  except  in  a  theology  of  the  Cross, 


vn.]  TELEOLOGY  ACUTE  IN  A  THEODICY  125 

The  only  final  theodicy  is  that  self-justification  of  God 
which  was  fundamental  to  His  justification  of  man.  No 
reason  of  man  can  justify  God  in  a  world  like  this.  He 
must  justify  Himself,  and  He  did  so  in  the  Cross  of  His  Son. 

No  reason  of  man  can  justify  God  for  His  treatment  of 
His  Son  ;  but  whatever  does  justify  it  justifies  God's  whole 
providence  with  the  universe,  and  solves  its  problem. 
He  so  spared  not  His  Son  as  with  Him  to  give  us  all 
things.  The  true  theology  of  the  Cross  and  its  atonement 
is  the  solution  of  the  world.  There  is  no  other.  It  is 
that  or  none.  And  that  theology  is  that  the  Cross  is  not 
simply  the  nadir  of  Incarnation,  but  that  it  is  God's  self 
offering  (under  the  worst  conditions  that  love  could  feel 
for  evil  man)  to  His  own  holy  name.  The  just  God  is 
the  chief  Sufferer  and  sole  Doer.  The  holy  love  there  is 
in  action  everywhere.  The  most  universal  thing  in  the 
universal  Christ  is  His  Cross.  Everywhere,  according  to 
God's  ubiquity,  immanence,  or  what  you  will.  His  holy 
love  is  invincibly  at  issue  with  death,  sin,  and  sorrow. 
Everywhere  is  redemption.  And  that  is  the  only  theo- 
dicy. The  purpose  of  salvation  is  the  principle  of  crea- 
tion ;  and  the  ruling  power  of  the  world  is  the  purpose  of 
God. 

It  is  no  light  problem  that  faces  the  Creator  in  His  world. 
There  was  never  such  a  fateful  experiment  as  when  God 
trusted  man  with  freedom.  But  our  Christian  faith  is  that 
He  well  knew  what  He  was  about.  He  did  not  do  that 
as  a  mere  adventure,  not  without  knowing  that  He  had  the 
power  to  remedy  any  abuse  of  it  that  might  occur,  and  to 
do  this  by  a  new  creation  more  mighty,  marvellous,  and 
mysterious  than  the  first.  He  had  means  to  emancipate 
even  freedom,  to  convert  moral  freedom,  even  in  its  ruin, 
into  spiritual.  If  the  first  creation  drew  on  His  might,  the 
second  taxed  His  all-might.  It  revealed  His  power  as 
moral  majesty,  as  holy  omnipotence,  most  chiefly  shown 
in  the  mercy  that  redeems  and  reconciles.     To  redeem 


126  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

creation  is  a  more  creative  act  than  it  was  to  create  it.  It  is 
the  last  thing  omnipotence  could  do.  What  is  omnipo- 
tence but  the  costly  and  inevitable  action  of  holiness  in 
establishing  itself  everywhere  for  ever.  The  supreme 
power  in  the  world  is  not  simply  the  j)ower  of  a  God  but  of 
a  holy  God,  upon  whose  rule  all  things  wait,  and  may  wait 
long.  It  is  no  slack  knot  that  the  Saviour  has  to  mido. 
All  the  energy  of  a  perverse  world  in  its  created  freedom 
pulled  on  the  tangle  to  tighten  it.  And  its  undoing  has 
given  the  supreme  form  to  all  God's  deahng  with  the  world. 
But  at  the  same  time  the  snarl  is  not  bej^ond  being  untied. 
Man  is  bom  to  be  redeemed.  The  final  key  to  the  first 
creation  is  the  second ;  and  the  first  was  done  with  the 
second  in  view.  If  moral  freedom  is  the  crown  of  the  first 
creation,  spiritual,  holy  freedom  is  the  goal  of  moral;  and 
it  is  the  gift  in  the  second  creation.  The  first  creation 
was  the  prophec}^  of  the  second  ;  the  second  was  the  first 
tragically  '  arrived.'  There  was  moral  resource  in  the 
Creator  equal  to  anything  that  might  happen  to  the  creature 
or  by  him.  And  that  resource  is  put  forth  in  Christ — in  His 
overcoming  of  the  world  on  the  Cross,  and  His  new  creation 
of  it  in  the  Spirit.  All  God's  omnipotence  is  finally  there. 
The  great  goal  is  not  the  mere  fruitage  of  the  first  creation, 
but  another  creation  more  creative  still.  The  first  does 
not  glide  into  the  second  ;  there  is  a  crisis  of  entirely  new 
departure. 

This  was  a  salvation  in  which  God  first  justified  Himself, 
hallowed  His  own  name,  and  made  His  eternal  purpose 
good  in  those  heavenly  places  which  rule  earthly  things. 
His  holy  love  is  not  there  just  as  the  instrument  of  man's 
salvation,  but  man's  salvation  is  there  to  the  glory  of  God's 
holy  love.  Man  is  only  saved  by  God's  holiness,  and  not 
from  it,  not  in  spite  of  it.  He  is  saved  by  the  tragic  action 
of  a  holy  God,  by  the  honour  done  by  God  in  Christ  to  His 
own  holy  name  and  purpose.  There  is  a  brief  phrase  in 
Julian  of  Norwich  which  has  a  whole  theodicy  in  it :  '  God 


VII.]  TELEOLOGY  ACUTE  IN  A  THEODICY  127 

will  save  His  Word.'  He  is  true  to  false  man  because  first ' 
true  to  His  o^vn  nature  and  promise.  His  justification  of 
man  is  only  possible  by  a  practical  justification  of  Himself. 
We  should  be  more  sure  of  man's  salvation  if  we  sought 
first  God's  righteousness — as  He  Himself  does — if  we  were 
more  concerned  to  secure  His  Kingdom  than  man's  weal. 
There  is  nothing  so  good  and  wholesome  for  man  as  the 
Kingdom  of  God  and  its  hoHness,  which  Christ  sought  first, 
and  won.  Nothing  else  assures  man's  destiny,  or  realises 
all  that  it  is  in  him  to  be.  The  great  and  final  assurance 
we  need  is  that  God  will  save,  must  save,  has  saved  His 
own  holy  purpose,  gospel,  and  glory ;  and  that  history  is 
the  action  of  that  salvation,  surely  however  obscurely, 
irresistibly  however  slowly.  With  that  faith  we  are  sure 
of  man's  future.  And  only  so.  Man  could  never  come  to 
himself  till  God  came  to  His  own.  If  we  first  hallow  God's 
name,  as  Christ  did  first,  as  God  in  Christ  did,  we  are 
delivered  from  all  evil,  and  all  things  are  ours. 

There  is  nothing  so  precious  in  the  world  as  souls.  All 
things  are  there  for  the  rearing  of  holy  persons,  holy  souls. 
And  it  is  the  goal  of  such  personality  that  is  the  solution  of 
the  world — by  the  power  over  the  world  and  the  action  in  it 
of  the  living,  loving  God,  whom  Christ  hallowed  and  trusted 
even  when  He  spared  Him  not.  Holy  souls  are  so  precious 
in  the  world  because  they  carry  the  note  of  a  holiness  above 
the  world,  they  are  earmarked  for  it,  and  their  destiny  is  the 
image  of  God.  But  Christ  was  not  destined  for  this  image  ; 
He  wore  it  from  the  first.  It  was  his  own.  He  was  and  is 
the  holiness  of  God.  Therefore  God  in  Christ,  crucified  and 
risen,  under  and  over  the  world's  worst  sin,  is  His  own  theo- 
dicy. He  is  doing  entire  justice  to  His  holy  name.  Christ 
stills  all  challenge  since  He  made  none,  but,  in  an  utter 
darkness  beyond  all  our  eclipse,  perfectly  glorified  the  Holy 
Father.  If  He,  the  great  one  conscience  of  the  world,  who 
had  the  best  right  and  the  most  occasion  in  all  the  world  to 
complain  of  God  for  the  world's  treatment  of  Him — if  He 


128  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [CH. 

hallowed  and  glorified  God's  name  with  joy  instead  (Matt.xi. 
25-7 ;  Luke  xxiii.  46),  there  is  no  moral  anomaly  that  cannot 
be  turned,  and  is  not  by  long  orbits  being  turned,  to  the 
honour  of  God's  holy  love,  and  the  joy  of  His  crushed  and 
common  millions.     His  wisdom  is  justified  of  His  children. 

If  this  seem  extravagant  (and  to  many  disciplined  minds 
I  fear  it  would  if  it  reached  them)  may  I  again  remind  you 
that  it  is  the  large  utterance  that  fits  the  consciousness  of 
the  Church,  and  it  may  well  be  too  much  for  individuals 
who  are  Churchmen  either  not  at  all  or  but  in  part.  We 
are  now  in  a  crisis  that  no  individual  can  measure,  nor  his 
piety  deal  with  ;  and  it  is  beyond  any  philosophy  or  idealism 
of  a  time.  It  needs  the  faith  of  an  agelong  holy  Church  to 
grasp  it.  Would  that  the  Church's  faith  could  always 
handle  it  in  the  true  power  of  that  crisis  greater  still  which 
made  the  Church — in  the  power  of  the  Church's  Cross  and 
Gospel.  An  awful  crisis  of  wickedness  like,  this  war  can 
only  be  met  on  the  Church's  height  and  range  of  faith  ; 
and  it  forces  us  up  to  levels  and  aspects  of  our  belief  which 
our  common  hours  of  moral  slackness  too  easily  feel  ex- 
treme. Nothing  but  the  great  theologies  of  redemption 
are  adequate  to  the  great  tragedies  of  the  world. 

It  is  the  triumph  of  Hellenic  and  philosophic  wisdom  to 
think  that  'it  is  as  wise  to  moderate  our  belief  as  our 
desires.'  But  with  Christian  wisdom  it  is  not  so.  We 
cannot  love  God  too  much,  nor  believe  too  much  in  His 
love,  nor  reckon  it  too  holy.  A  due  faith  in  Him  is  im- 
moderate, absolute  trust,  and  it  has  a  creed  to  correspond. 
Only  an  immoderate  belief  is  true  enough  for  the  extra- 
ordinary tragedy  of  the  world — the  kind  of  belief  in  which 
Christ  conquered  the  whole  crisis  of  the  world,  not  to  say 
of  Eternity.  We  are  put  upon  no  such  trial  of  our  faith 
as  befell  Christ.  All  our  concern  is  but  sectional  compared 
with  His.  And  no  language  is  extreme  which  does  justice 
to  His  conquest  of  His  trial  as  the  Act  in  which  God's 


vn.]  TELEOLOGY  ACUTE  IN  A  THEODICY  129 

grace  subdues  the  whole  evil  of  the  whole  universe  for  ever. 
If  that  is  not  true  there  is  no  theodicy  of  the  world,  and  in 
the  end  no  teleology.  We  are  still  groping  ;  and  in  our 
groping  giving  the  lie  to  Christ,  who  was  entirely  holy, 
and  perfectly  sure  of  His  own  work  as  cosmic  and  final. 
What  happens  to  the  sinful  creatures  of  God,  however 
vastly  tragic,  is  less  monstrous  than  what  happened  to  the 
Son  of  God.  But  what  was  done  by  the  Son  of  God  is, 
and  He  knew  it  to  be,  beyond  all  measure  of  speech  or 
thought,  above  anything  that  God's  children  can  do  to 
each  other  of  weal  or  woe.  Not  to  realise  this  is  to  have  less 
than  the  Christian  insight,  and  another  scale  of  values.  All 
the  great  theologies  are  but  poor  efforts  to  pierce  that 
heaven  of  the  Cross,  or  to  drop  into  that  deep  a  plummet, 
which  may  register  true,  but  will  only  sink  so  far  and  no 
further  into  the  abysmal  pressure.  Christ  finished  the 
world- work  given  Him  to  do.  He  brought  the  world 
home.  (If  this  was  not  the  work  given  Him  He  was  a 
megalomaniac,  for  He  believed  it  was  ;  and  He  infected 
His  Apostles.)  In  Him  the  whole  creation  does  but  praise, 
laud,  and  magnify  in  advance  the  God  of  its  salvation, 
evermore  calling  Him  holy  whatever  has  come  and  gone, 
and  owning  that  it  was  worth  aU  it  endured  to  serve  with 
such  praise.  Yea,  it  would  go  through  it  again  at  the 
Father's  will.  In  Him  the  whole  creation  sees  of  the  travail 
of  its  soul  and  is  satisfied.  He  who  can  take  away  the 
sin  of  the  world  has  in  His  reversion  ihe  reason,  completion, 
peace,  joy,  and  glory  of  all  things.  The  Destroyer  of  guilt 
pacifies  all  grief,  the  Reconciler  of  our  enmity  ends  all 
question.  To  see  the  devastator  a  truly  penitent  thief 
would  compensate  any  Christian  victim.  The  Justifier 
of  men  is  the  one  and  only  theodicy  of  God.  The  Gospel, 
which  is  the  power  of  God  unto  a  soul's  salvation,  is  so  as 
the  supreme  action  of  the  righteousness  of  a  loving  God 
with  the  whole  world. 


lao  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

The  worid  does  not  ask  the  question  as  it  is  put  by  the 
Church.  The  Church,  starting  from  the  Holy  One,  asks 
how  man  shall  be  just  with  that  God,  and  she  oAves  her 
existence  to  the  answer  in  Christ's  Cross  and  Gospel.  But 
the  world,  with  its  egoist  start,  asks  how  God  shall  be  just 
with  man.  The  one  brings  man  to  God's  bar,  the  other 
brings  God  to  man's.  Christ  deals  with  both.  The  first 
question  He  answers  with  God's  free  justification  of  man, 
the  second  question  He  makes  us  recast.  He  does  not 
bring  God  to  man's  bar  but  to  God's  own,  since  there  is 
none  greater.  He  brings  God's  providence  to  the  bar 
of  God's  own  promise,  His  own  Gospel.  He  attunes  it  to 
God's  own  conscience.  His  o"«ai  nature ;  He  embodies  the 
self-justification  of  God.  In  Christ  we  are  justified  freely 
by  God's  grace  because  God  is  fully  justified  by  Himself  ; 
He  bears  Himself  His  holy  judgment  of  the  world.  Is 
that  too  absurd  to  be  true,  is  it  too  good  to  be  true  ?  If 
any  man  thinks  he  has  anything  to  suffer  in  the  flesh, 
God  more.  In  all  their  afflictions  He  was  more  afflicted. 
The  crime  of  man  to  man  inflicts  a  greater  wrong  on 
God,  i.e.  on  one  who  by  His  holy  love  is  much  more 
sensitive  than  man,  and  yet  also  more  committed  to  do 
justice.  God  has  more  to  carry  in  the  Cross  of  His  Son 
than  man  has  in  the  nemesis  of  his  sin.  For  God  has  to 
bear  what  sin  means  to  the  Holy,  and  not  to  a  vision 
bleared  by  guilt,  or  a  heart  hardened  by  it  past  feeling. 
And  that  is  something  greater  than  all  the  catastrophe  of 
time,  on  the  principle  that  man  is  greater  than  the  universe 
which  crushes  him,  because  he  knows  it.  Christ  in  justify- 
ing man  bore  the  last  judgment  of  the  world,  seeing  and 
feeling  sin  as  the  Holy  alone  does.  But  it  is  only  those  who 
are  justified  with  God  that  know  this  self- justification  of 
God,  and  His  hallowing  in  Christ  of  His  own  holy  name 
on  the  scale  of  the  whole  race.  The  justified  do  not  chal- 
lenge the  justice  of  God.  But  for  either  philosophy  or 
common  sense  this  way  of  regarding  things  is  an  entire 


vii.]  TELEOLOGY  ACUTE  IX  A  THEODICY  131 

revolution.  To  see  a  world  like  ours  as  the  process  of  a 
foregone  and  finished  salvation  is  a  change  so  prodigious 
and  miraculous  that  it  imi)lies  a  change  in  us  so  great  as 
passing  from  death  to  life.  The  last  theodicy  is  our 
regeneration,  which  makes  credible  the  new  birth  of  the 
world  whereof  the  soul  is  an  organic  part.  This  is  the 
standing  miracle  ;  which  is  inadequately  divined  by  those 
who  think  to  solve  the  miracle  question  by  saying  vaguely 
that  all  is  miracle,  but  who  mean  no  more  than  that  all  is 
marvellous.  The  fundamental  miracle  is  the  new  creation 
of  creation  by  the  grace  of  the  Holy.  It  is  not  grace 
simply ;  for  mercy  alone  is  not  so  supernatural,  but  it  is 
the  grace  of  the  Holy,  the  contact  and  embrace  of  sinners 
by  the  Holy.  That  is  the  miracle  at  the  root  of  all  Chris- 
tian reality ;  for  the  sake  of  which  all  other  miracles 
exist ;  and  it  is  one  which  God  alone  could  explain. 

The  chief  bane  of  current  religion,  the  loss  of  miracle, 
awe,  and  wonder,  from  its  sense  of  love  and  tone  of  worship, 
is  due  to  its  neglect  of  the  holiness  of  God  ;  as  if  it  were 
but  a  theological  theme  compared  with  His  love,  and  one 
which  might  be  relegated  to  the  attention  of  those  circles 
that  discuss  the  divine  attributes.  Whereas  it  is  no 
attribute  unless  love  is.  It  is  the  first  thing  in  God, 
His  very  being.  His  love  is  divine  only  because  it  is 
holy,  and  not  because  it  is  intense  or  wide  ;  it  is  victorious 
and  eternal  only  as  holy,  only  as  the  Father  is  King  in 
righteous  majesty,  mystic  and  infinite.  God's  hoHness 
is  the  absolute  monarchy  of  His  righteous  love.  This 
popular  dislocation  of  the  holiness  and  the  love  of  God,  to 
the  comparative  neglect  of  holiness,  or  its  relegation  to  a 
remote  communion  with  Him  by  temperamental  saints, 
means  the  unmoralising  of  love ;  and  it  is  the  cause  of 
that  loss  of  moral  strength  which  robs  the  Church's 
message  of  its  public  influence  ;  reduces  it  to  the  region  of 
the  individual,  the  mystic,  the  domestic,  or  the  philan- 
thropic ;   makes  it  sentimental  bustle  or  else  banishes  it 


132  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

to  an  sesthetic  worship  where  it  is  more  revered  than 
reahsed  ;  and  deprives  it  of  power  to  reconcile  either  man 
with  man,  people  with  people,  or  history  with  God. 

After  all,  the  present  cataclysm  is  an  acute  condensation 
of  what  has  been  going  on  in  nature,  human  and  other,  for 
millenniums.  If  faith  could  survive  that,  need  it  succumb 
to  this  ?  If  the  existence  of  hell  is  compatible  with  faith 
in  God,  and  is  even  of  His  ordinance,  must  we  lose  faith 
when  it  comes  through  earth's  crust  in  a  volcano  ?  That 
is  quite  so.  But  two  things  aggravate  the  present  crisis. 
Of  one  I  have  spoken — the  shock  of  a  Christian  nation 
repudiating  even  natural  ethic.  The  other  is  the  violent 
disillusion  of  our  hopes  from  civilisation.  Yet  is  it  so  sur- 
prising ?  I  have  hinted  more  than  once,  that,  for  all  its 
crushing  effect  upon  the  faith  of  many,  the  present  disaster 
is  less  surprising  when  we  read  with  the  moral  intelligence 
the  tendency  of  things  for  a  whole  century  and  especially 
a  whole  generation.  The  dirty  chimney  needed  to  be 
fired.  This  flare  has  been  long  smouldering.  Most  of  the 
drifts,  and  all  the  dominants,  in  modem  civilisation  were 
inviting  it.  Indeed,  if  it  is  hard  to  believe  in  a  theodicy 
with  things  as  they  are,  it  would  be  harder  still  to  trust 
Christian  righteousness  if  disaster  did  not  follow  from 
things  as  they  have  been.  The  present  situation  a  monu- 
ment to  the  failure  of  the  Church  !  WTiy,  it  is  the 
necessary  reaction  on  an  egoist  civilisation  of  the  God  of 
the  Church's  Gospel.  The  war  is  a  revelation  of  man's 
evil  on  the  one  hand  and  God's  righteousness  on  the  other. 
In  antiquity  it  must  have  seemed  bewildering  to  the 
average  Jew  that  Babylon  should  have  been  allowed 
to  take  away  place  and  name  from  the  nation  that  stood 
alone  in  the  world  for  the  true  God.  It  destroyed  the 
faith  of  most  of  them.  But  it  brought  out  the  prophets, 
to  whose  anointed  eyes  it  was  not  a  strange  thing.  The 
strange  thing  would  have  been  if  judgment  had  not  come. 


VII.]  TELEOLOGY  ACUTE  IN  A  THEODICY  133 

For  judgment  begins  at  the  house  of  God,  and  the  greater 
the  light  the  greater  the  perdition.  The  people's  treat- 
ment of  their  Hght  in  their  prophets,  the  contempt  for  the 
preachers  who  ingeminated  judgment  in  ears  deaf  to  them 
but  alert  to  all  the  false  prophets,  platforms,  journals  and 
politics  of  the  hour — that  could  have  but  one  end,  if  God's 
kingdom,  righteousness,  and  humanity  still  endured.  No 
culture  can  avert  the  judgment  that  always  waits  upon  scorn 
of  obedience  and  the  contempt  of  law.  No  power  can  pre- 
vent the  collapse  of  the  hybristic  mind.  And  civilisation, 
in  capital  and  labour,  male  and  female,  young  and  old,  has 
with  us  all  been  resenting  submission  to  moral  control, 
ousting  conscience,  slighting  law,  hailing  revolt,  cultivating 
violence,  and  reducing  religion  to  a  social  decorum,  where 
it  was  not  driving  the  supernatural  out  of  life.  Its  very 
ethic  was  attempted  on  an  anti theological,  not  to  say  an 
unmoral,  basis.  Utilitarianism,  organisation,  efficiency 
were  coming  to  rule  all.  The  very  rebels  against  law  found 
their  strength  in  combination,  which  is  but  law  in  another 
form.  It  was  therefore  inevitable  that  the  vitality,  the 
will,  the  personality,  and  all  that  goes  with  the  voluntarist, 
active,  creative  side  of  man,  the  side  where  faith  lives, 
should  react,  revolt,  and  claim  its  own  against  ubiquitous 
organisation.  This  has  happened  in  the  protest  of  the 
nations  against  the  world  empire  of  the  one  nation  which 
itself  had  become  the  chief  example  of  machine-made 
society,  of  the  death  of  public  opinion,  and  the  denial  of 
religious  control.  If  there  was  to  be  room  for  the  soul  and 
a  gospel  for  life  at  all  it  could  not  be  a  gospel  of  law,  which 
is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  The  function  of  a  gospel  is  to 
deliver  us  from  law ;  not,  however,  by  despising  and 
abolishing  it  but  by  teaching  it  its  beneficent  limit  and 
place.  That  place  is  not  control.  Neither  law  nor 
thought,  no  system  of  any  kind,  can  take  the  supreme 
control  of  a  person  or  society  of  persons  without  provoking 
revolt.    Yet  control  th^re  must  be.    And  the  friction  of 


134  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

the  time  has  been  caused  by  the  effort  to  control  the  initia- 
tive soul  by  a  mere  regulative  system,  to  replace  the  moral 
order  by  material  or  intellectual  organisation.  The  pro- 
test against  law  is  made  by  the  personality  of  mankind, 
which  law  was  stifling,  the  State  suppressing,  and  reason 
subduing  to  mere  process.  The  German  military  system 
is  like  the  rest  of  civilisation  for  the  moment — an  organisa- 
tion of  colossal  forces  handled  by  mediocre  personalities. 
WTiereas  the  chief  assertion  of  power  is  an  assertion  of  per- 
sonality. But  even  then,  even  with  a  Napoleon,  without 
moral  control  and  loyalty,  personality  is  but  another  and 
more  dangerous  force,  increased  by  combination.  What 
is  to  control,  and  harness,  and  develop  personality  ?  Not 
its  organisation,  either  as  a  union  or  a  nation.  Only  per- 
sonality, only  the  action  within  it  and  over  it  of  another 
Personality  whose  right  it  is  to  reign,  only  the  action  of  the 
personal  God,  whose  holy  majesty  is  revealed  in  the  im- 
perative of  conscience  and  its  re-creation.  But  in  the 
retreat  of  law,  and  the  failure  of  Agnosticism,  their  place 
has  been  taken  by  a  vast,  vague  Monism,  whose  action  is 
not  in  the  way  of  control  but  of  increased  impulse,  and 
which  is  a  mere  dynamic  overriding  and  erasing  moral 
values  in  a  civilised  barbarism.  It  has  more  mass  than 
quality ;  it  is  impressive  but  not  authoritative  ;  it  affects 
but  it  does  not  command.  Monism  but  feeds  the  assertive 
personality  with  new  assertion.  It  abets  the  egoism 
which  resents  control.  It  makes  it  an  orifice  of  the  total 
world  substance,  process,  and  pressure  in  one  individual 
direction.  It  puts  behind  the  egoism  all  the  force  and 
sanction  of  a  natura  naturans.  '  Be  yourself,  superhuman  ! 
Be  all  it  is  in  you  to  be.  Widen  the  outlet  in  you  of  mighty 
nature.  Realise  your  individuality  with  unfaltering  force 
and  courage.  Be  afraid  only  of  fear  or  weakness.  Get  in 
first,  stay  in  last.'  Nothing  qualitative  is  here  put  over 
the  Ego.  It  goes  on  till  it  ran  against  a  quantitative 
superior,  a  superior  force  of  its  own  kind,  a  more  energetic 


vn.]  TELEOLOGY  ACUTE  IN  A  THEODICY  135 

and  demonic  Ego,  a  greater  degree  of  the  universal  elan. 
And  that  is  not  control,  it  is  mere  collision,  with  survival 
of  the  strongest,  the  most  heartless,  the  most  conscienceless 
will.  For  moral  control  we  must  have  another  person 
within  the  person,  a  conscience  other  but  not  alien  to  our 
own,  a  moral  power  which  by  a  creative  invasion  changes 
the  quaUty  of  the  elan,  and  does  not  simply  augment  its 
volimie  or  cross  its  path.  There  is  no  control  in  Monism 
with  its  force,  law  and  efficiency,  but  only  in  Monotheism 
with  its  will,  conscience,  and  love.  We  cannot  indeed  go 
back  to  Victorian  legalism  and  rationalism.  Yet  to  go 
forward  to  the  action  of  a  mere  monistic  world  process  is 
to  go  down.  We  can  go  on  and  up  only  if  the  growing 
sense  of  personal  power  and  faculty  in  the  race  includes 
the  witness  in  conscience  and  history  to  a  personal  Lord 
and  God,  who  will  spare  us  nothing,  will  spare  not  even  His 
Son  in  His  blood  (which  is  Himself),  that  righteousness 
may  reign  and  holiness  cover  the  earth.  The  worship  of 
law  had  to  go,  for  law's  o'w^i  sake,  but  it  has  been  replaced 
by  no  worship.  We  do  not  follow  a  lead,  we  are  but  borne 
on  a  stream.  The  growing  sense  of  our  o^vn  personality 
has  been  captured  by  no  new  sense  of  a  sovereign  person- 
ality, an  imperative  more  sovereign,  because  more  search- 
ing and  humbling,  than  laws  could  be  for  a  being  intrinsi- 
cally spiritual.  Religion,  which  has  grown  indeed  as  a 
sensibility  (as  the  taste  for  mysticism  shows),  has  lost  as  a 
control.  In  a  time  of  swelling  power  it  has  not  grown  as  a 
power  but  only  as  an  atmosphere.  It  has  become  fine  for 
the  few  instead  of  powerful  wdth  the  many,  soft  where  it 
should  have  been  strong  to  cope  with  the  unprecedented 
egoism  of  the  race.  And  we  have  in  the  whole  moral 
situation  what  I  have  said  we  have  in  the  war — the 
spectacle  of  colossal  forces  handled  by  mediocre  person- 
alities, forceful  enough  but  not  great.  We  have  the  reign  of 
stupid  ability,  which  can  work  its  powerful  engine,  but  can- 
not take  the  measure  of  a  moral  world,  or  even  a  political. 


136  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

And  what  I  am  suggesting  from  the  viewpoint  of  a 
theodicy  is  that,  if  righteousness  remain,  there  could  remain 
for  such  a  situation  but  judgment,  that  the  wonderful 
thing  is  not  the  judgment  but  its  delay,  that  the  amazement 
would  be  if  no  judgment  did  come.  The  surprise  would 
be  if  everything  went  on  in  a  godless  civilisation  as  if  men 
were  waiting  on  the  Lord  instead  of  using  Him  to  wait  on 
them.  But  is  there  such  a  world  righteousness  in  supreme 
and  final  command  ?  My  case  is  that  there  is  no  certainty 
of  it  till  we  are  sure  of  more.  We  cannot  trust  a  world 
righteousness  till  we  are  sure  of  God's  holiness.  And  the 
certainty  of  that  is  a  matter  of  religion,  and  of  atoning  and 
redeeming  religion.  It  is  the  matter  of  religion,  the  matter 
of  the  religion,  of  religion  equally  moral  and  mystic,  of 
evangelical  religion,  of  faith  in  the  final  crisis  and  victory 
of  the  moral  soul,  God's  and  man's,  in  the  Cross  of  Christ, 
who  has  overcome  the  world  for  good  and  all  in  an  eternal 
Act  of  love,  judgment,  grace  and  glory.  He  starts  the 
new  ethic  in  creative  mercy,  the  new  Humanity  in  regenera- 
tive forgiveness  ;  and  the  forgiveness  has  its  moral  ground 
in  atonement  to  the  living  law,  to  the  holy  God,  the  God 
of  the  whole  moral  universe,  and  of  the  Church  in  so  far 
as  the  Church  is  the  earnest  of  a  whole  and  holy  world. 
The  Cross  is  not  a  theological  theme,  nor  a  forensic  device, 
but  the  crisis  of  the  moral  universe  on  a  scale  far  greater 
than  earthly  war.  It  is  the  theodicy  of  the  whole  God 
dealing  vnih.  the  whole  soul  of  the  whole  world  in  holy 
love,  righteous  judgment,  and  redeeming  grace.  There  is  no 
universal  ethic  but  what  is  based  in  that  power  and  deed. 
There  is  no  sound  theology  but  what  moves  in  universal 
righteousness  to  a  universal  Kingdom  of  peace  and  joy 
to  the  glory  of  the  holy  name.  This  is  a  point,  or  rather 
a  centre,  to  which  we  must  return  before  we  are  don©. 


VIII.]  PHILOSOPHICAL  THEODICY  137 


CHAPTER  VIII 

PHILOSOPHICAL  THEODICY 


The  questions  of  a  teleology  or  a  theodicy  of  the  universe 
are  the  final  questions  and  the  most  fascinating  for  philo- 
sophy, and  especially  modem  philosophy ;  but  they  are 
also  the  most  tantaHsing.  They  are  just  those  where 
philosophy  most  conspicuously  breaks  down,  whether  as 
an  avenue  to  reality  or  as  a  guide  of  life. 

In  a  great  calamity,  which  goes  to  the  very  foundations 
of  the  moral  soul,  and  makes  us  feel  as  if  the  bottom  had 
dropped  out  of  the  moral  world,  the  poetry  which  used 
to  delight,  uplift,  and  stay  us  loses  its  power ;  and  we 
turn,  as  many  do  at  this  hour,  from  poet  to  prophet, 
from  genius  to  apostle,  from  our  classics  to  our  New 
Testament.  We  turn  from  imagination  to  faith,  from 
inspiration  to  redemption,  from  all  men  to  Christ,  and 
from  all  to  His  Cross.  So  also  we  turn  from  philosophy — 
not  ungrateful,  but  still  unsatisfied.  We  are  slaked  rather 
than  fed.  It  has  indeed  its  vast  and  ennobling  use.  In 
culture  poetry  itself  is  hardly  so  ennobling  and  so  steady- 
ing, bringing,  perhaps,  more  elation  but  less  grasp,  power, 
and  stay.  But  philosophy  is  only  the  poetry  and  majesty 
of  thought.  It  is  truth  writ  very  large  and  impressive 
to  that  kind  of  imagination.  And  there  come  crises 
when  from  this  austere  poetry  also  we  turn  unfilled  and 
unstayed,  and  we  must  go  to  deeper  springs,  more  eternal 


138  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [oh. 

powers,  and  more  intimate  controls.  Truths  will  not  do 
the  work  of  powers,  nor  ideals  that  of  faith.  From  the 
poetry  of  great  feeling  we  had  to  tmn,  when  it  was  stajdng 
power  and  not  refreshment  that  we  needed,  to  the  poetry 
of  great  thought — from  Byron  to  Wordsworth,  from  the 
empyrean  and  discursive  imagination  of  Shelley  to  the 
penetrative  and  masculine  imagination  of  Browning. 
So  also,  passing  on  from  the  spacious  poetry  of  truth  in 
thought,  we  must  turn  to  the  driving  power  of  revelation, 
from  the  vast  contours  of  philosophy  to  the  vaster  orbits 
of  theology,  to  the  energetic  poetry  of  the  Holy  and  the 
Eternal.  As  in  the  trenches,  it  is  said,  some  cultured 
soldiers  turn  from  the  love  poems  that  delighted  them  at 
home  but  are  adequate  no  more,  to  find  the  soul's  mood 
met  only  in  the  Epistles  of  Paul,  so  with  many  more  to 
whom  the  aw^ul  might  of  evil  has  been  revealed  as  mid- 
Europe  has  revealed  it.  Face  to  face  with  the  utmost, 
the  most  devilish,  forms  of  suffering  and  wickedness, 
they  had  no  stay  but  in  religion's  contact  with  reality, 
in  God's  final  conquest  of  both  pain  and  guilt,  which 
Christian  faith  finds  in  the  Cross  of  Christ  alone  as  the 
supreme  exercise  of  the  omnipotence  of  God. 

In  this  ultimate  matter  of  a  theodicy  philosophy  well 
points  out  that  we  have  two  questions  ;  and  before  each 
it  is  brought  to  a  complete  standstill.  We  have  the 
question  of  evil  as  suffering  and  the  question  of  evil  as 
sin.  They  are  distinct  though  closely  connected.  All 
sin  is  an  ill,  but  all  ill  is  not  sin,  nor  is  it  caused  by  it. 
Suffering  abounded  in  the  animal  world  before  man  ap- 
peared with  the  moral  freedom  that  makes  sin  possible. 
Pain  came  before  sin,  and,  as  it  has  no  connection  with 
freedom,  it  is  non-moral.  And  in  any  theodicy,  or  justi- 
fication of  God,  His  treatment  of  the  two  is  different,  to 
our  Christian  faith  at  least.  The  power  in  Him  can  con- 
vert suffering  to  a  sacrament,  but  it  must  destroy  sin.     It 


vm.]  PHILOSOPHICAL  THEODICY  139 

can  transcend  and  sanctify  suffering  while  the  suffering 
remains,  but  sin  it  must  abolish.  The  Cross  of  Christ  can 
submerge  suffering,  and  make  it  a  means  of  salvation,  but 
with  sin  it  can  make  neither  use  nor  terms ;  it  can  only- 
make  an  end  of  it.  God  in  Christ  is  capable  of  suffering 
and  of  transmuting  sorrow ;  but  of  sin  He  is  incapable,  and 
His  work  is  to  destroy  it.  And,  by  a  mystery  hard  to 
search,  His  conversion  of  the  one  is  the  same  act  as  His 
destruction  of  the  other.  His  transfiguration  of  suffering 
in  the  Cross  is  also  His  conquest  of  sin.  No  doubt  insoluble 
problems  remain.  Why  in  His  creation  must  the  way 
upward  lie  through  suffering  ?  Why,  on  this  hard  hill 
road,  should  we  be  met  by  sin  descending  upon  us,  seized, 
and  flung  into  the  abyss  ?  But  at  least  we  can  say  that 
it  is  only  one  of  these,  it  is  the  sin  not  the  suffering,  that 
impugns  the  holiness  which  makes  God  God.  A  holy  God 
might  ordain  the  pain  He  took  on  Himself,  but  he  could 
not  ordain  the  sin.  Suffering  He  could  bear  directly,  but 
sin  only  sympathetically.  Or  though  he  might  sweep 
away  the  good  and  the  bad  in  some  great  catastrophe  of 
nature,  how  can  He  allow  the  moral  perdition  even  of 
those  who  were  on  the  way  to  goodness,  the  fall  even  of 
the  saint  ? 

These  questions  are  quite  unanswerable.  That  is  why 
a  book  on  such  a  subject  is  at  a  disadvantage.  We  can 
but  fall  back  on  the  last  choice  and  committal  which  we 
call  faith.  And  that  seems  to  suggest  a  sermon  rather 
than  a  discussion.  Yet  when  God  came  to  deal  with  the 
position  practically  and  finally  it  was  by  the  folly  of 
preaching.  He  took  the  dogmatic  note  and  not  the  dialectic. 
He  did  not  put  thought  on  a  new  line,  but  the  thinker  in  a 
new  life.  The  situation  is  insolubly  irrational,  so  far  as 
we  are  concerned.  The  solution  is  in  action,  as  Carlyle 
said, — ^but  in  God's,  as  he  did  not  say.  We  can  but 
trust  God,  who  by  a  saving  Act  masters  the  thinker  and 
His  world,  as  possessing  an  answer  for  thought  that  He 


140  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

does  not  yet  see  fit  to  give.  And  above  all  we  must 
regard  Him  as  having  destroyed  sin  in  principle  by  a 
way  which  carries  with  it  also  the  end  of  pain.  We 
must  regard  Him  also  as  destroying  evil  in  practice  by 
methods  which  seem  to  us  often  very  devoid  and  inadequate 
when  we  criticise  His  campaign,  but  which  to  Him  are 
perfectly  adequate  and  victorious.  We  can  give  God  the 
glory  even  when  He  does  not  increase  our  joy  ;  for  our 
great  object  is  not  the  delight  of  our  soul  but  the  glory  of 
God.  That  sense  of  sin  destroyed  He  does  give  us  in  the 
experience  of  our  own  faith  and  conscience  ;  but  He  does 
not  let  us  pierce  with  our  theoretic  reason  the  deep  method 
and  long  strategy  of  His  saving  Will  with  the  whole  world. 
We  may  be  more  sure  of  our  theodicy  than  clear  about 
our  theology.  If  a  science  of  history  be  hardly  possible, 
far  less  possible  is  a  science  of  God's  vindication  in  history 
drawn  by  induction  from  its  course. 

Some  hard  humility  becomes  our  reason  here.  For  its 
efforts  at  a  solution  almost  always  run  out  into  a  slight 
on  conscience.  They  move  the  previous  question.  They 
pass  into  a  denial  of  the  great  crux,  either  by  postulating 
a  limitation  on  the  power  of  God  other  than  He  imposes 
on  Himself  (which  is  to  reduce  His  deity),  or  by  denying 
the  fundamental  principle  of  the  conscience,  which  is  the 
radical  and  eternal  antagonism  of  good  and  bad.  The 
philosophic  temperament,  like  the  mystic,  is  too  often 
accompanied  by  a  certain  lack  of  poignant  moral  sensibility, 
a  certain  acquiescence  in  the  morally  intolerable,  and  a 
lack  of  the  sense  of  moral  tragedy,  as  of  concern  for  the 
soul.  It  is  more  interested  in  process  than  in  action,  in 
cohesion  than  in  crisis,  in  order  than  in  miracle,  in  growth 
than  in  grace.  Its  tendency  is  to  substitute  the  aesthetic 
class  of  consideration  for  the  moral.  It  seeks  for  connec- 
tion rather  than  cultivates  communion.  It  does  not  feel 
the  sting  of  sin  so  much  as  the  nuisance  of  it.  It  feels 
it  to  be  an  impertinence  rather  than  a  revolt.      And  it 


vni.]  PHILOSOPHICAL  THEODICY  141 

is  tempted  to  regard  the  gulf  between  the  holy  and  the 
sinful  as  more  apparent  than  real,  as  adjustable  in  due 
course  by  some  bridge  of  device  rather  than  to  be  closed 
by  a  moral  crisis  and  redemption,  as  something  that  will 
yield  to  evolutionary  treatment,  to  nursing  and  not 
operation ;  as  if  sin  would  in  due  course  be  abolished  like 
a  dangerous  blood  clot  in  the  general  circulation.  Sin 
becomes  but  a  relative  stage  like  everything  else,  and 
therefore  a  relative  boon — were  it  only  as  something  to 
push  against  in  our  ascent.  Any  notion  of  an  absolute 
incompatibility  and  eternal  conflict  of  good  and  bad  is 
therefore  an  illusion  in  this  point  of  view.  Progress, 
culture,  will  dispel  that  illusion,  and  these  extreme  esti- 
mates will  vanish,  and  their  antagonisms  converge,  as  they 
are  drawn  up  into  the  ascending  stream  of  things.  That 
is  to  say,  ethical  values  must  yield  to  the  mere  dynamic 
movement  of  a  natura  naturans,  quality  being  submerged 
in  force.  This  to  most  will  seem  the  relapse  into  bar- 
barism. It  is  always  barbarism  where  moral  considera- 
tions must  be  submerged  in  the  natural  expansion  of  a 
power,  a  system,  or  a  race,  as  Germany  has  shown. 

This  theory  of  a  development  essentially  dynamic  and 
not  moral  is  a  mere  faith  in  progress  now  getting  out  of 
date.  It  is  a  faith — but  of  the  inferior  and  ungroimded 
kind  which  easily  becomes  credulity.  This  destiny  to 
endless  progress  cannot  be  a  matter  of  knowledge  ;  and 
it  may  be  a  superstition,  if  it  has  no  guarantee  beyond  a 
presumption  more  or  less  high,  and  no  certainty  of  a 
goal.  It  is  at  least  an  illusion,  which  many  cherish,  that 
history  must  mean  advance  and  not  mere  movement, 
and  that  civilisation  carries  in  it  progress  as  a  sort  of 
natural  law.  Civilisation  and  progress  are  identical  to 
so  many,  that  it  costs  them  a  great  effort  to  think  the 
two  apart.  Hence  the  shock  from  the  war  as  the  out- 
come of  civiHsation.  We  have  an  almost  incurable  belief, 
partly  innate,  partly  inbred,  in  a  Golden  Age  awaiting 


142  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

society  ;  and  it  takes  much  historic  thought  to  discern 
that  the  belief  in  progress  was  not  in  antiquity  at  all,  and 
to  realise  what  an  importation  it  is  from  Christian  faith,  and 
how  little  there  is  to  sustain  it  in  historic  sight.  Before 
Christianity,  and  outside  Israel,  the  Golden  Age  was  only  in 
the  past.  When  we  take  a  large  enough  survey,  and  especi- 
ally a  survey  with  the  ethical  eye,  the  tendency  to  relapse 
and  degenerate  is  but  little  less  apparent  than  the  tendency 
to  advance,  as  Ranke  says.  And  at  certain  points  it  gets 
the  upper  hand,  as  it  does  to-daj^  The  salt  and  sterile 
sea  rushes  up  the  stream  with  a  huge  '  bore.'  At  any 
rate,  the  value  before  God  of  each  race  or  stage  is  not 
that  which  can  be  set  forth  in  terms  of  civilisation.  It  is 
not  even  to  be  expressed  in  terms  of  culture  ^  intellectual 
and  aesthetic.  It  is  something  interior  to  most  that  is 
called  progress,  something  which  may  cause  God  to  think 
less  than  we  do  of  our  wondrous  age,  and  more  than  we 
do  of  ages  that  we  consider  we  have  long  outgrown.  A 
time  process  like  progress  cannot  be  of  first  moment  to 
the  Eternal  Spirit  who  has  no  after  nor  before.  What  is 
of  such  moment  to  Him  is  timeless  acts  like  grace,  re- 
demption, faith,  and  love.  Christ  can  make  good  and 
godly  men  under  any  system.  Eternity  is  a  much  more 
powerful  factor  in  history  than  progress.  At  any  rate,  the 
value  of  an  age  or  people  for  God  (who  is  an  Eternal 
Simultaneity)  is  not  just  what  it  contributes  to  other 
and  later  stages,  but  its  own  response  and  devotion  to 
Him ;  and  His  coimection  with  progress  though  real  is 
indirect.  Progress  is  much  more  rapid  in  the  more  ex- 
ternal and  less  eternal  things  ;  which  indicates  how  little 
stay  it  has  in  itself.  Europe  has  arrived  at  a  crisis  in 
which  the  expansion  of  civilisation  has  rent  its  crust. 
Its  pace  has  ruptured  its  heart.     Its  collapse  reveals  the 

1  The  historian  Lamprecht  said  that  America  had  civilisation  but  no  cul- 
ture. By  culture  he  was  thinking  probably  of  the  mentality  produced  by  a 
long  history  and  a  regard  for  the  past. 


vm.]  PHILOSOPHICAL  THEODICY  143 

spiritual  hoUowness  and  the  moral  perdition  within.  And 
the  painful  process  of  restoring  to  progress  eternal  values 
is  judgment. 

It  is  the  practical  and  moral  interests  of  life  that  raise 
these  great  questions.  They  did  not  condense  out  of  the 
blue  sky  of  abstract  themes  and  speculative  dreams. 
Therefore  it  is  in  the  region  of  the  soul's  moral  life  that 
any  solution  must  be  found  that  enables  us  to  go  on.  It 
is  in  the  region  of  faith  and  in  the  terms  of  its  theology. 
The  secret  of  the  Lord  is  not  with  the  philosopher  (though 
God  whispers  in  his  ear,  it  is  not  that  He  whispers),  but 
with  the  prophet. 


God's  justification  of  us  is  also  His  Self-justification.  It 
is  in  saving  our  conscience  from  a  doubt  of  His  that  He 
satisfies  it  and  its  world  problems.  That  we  may  have 
seen.  Yet  the  mind  whose  peace  gives  it  leisure  to  think 
wiU  never  cease  to  find  delight  and  hope  in  efforts  to 
frame  a  philosophic  theodicy,  and  to  graft  the  untoward 
into  the  general  good  in  some  rational  way.  It  has  been 
so  from  the  Stoics  to  the  Illumination,  from  Leibnitz  to 
De  Maistre,  and  even  the  Bridgewater  Treatises.  Philo- 
sophy deals  but  with  the  ordered  course  or  content  of  the 
world  under  its  eyes.  It  has  gradually  groT\Ti  in  the  power 
to  grasp  such  law,  and  to  extend  its  sphere  of  influence. 
It  is  alien  to  the  idea  of  crisis  and  tragedy.  It  cannot 
therefore  admit  an  absolute  contradiction  to  the  world's 
general  success  like  sin.  It  is  helpless  before  anything  so 
entirely  irrational  in  kind  ;  hence  its  tendency  to  deny  sin 
as  more  than  the  crude  instincts  unduly  prolonged,  and  its 
efforts  to  bring  to  manageable  order  the  general  anomalies 
of  life,  and  adjust  them  to  its  world  scheme.  It  says 
they  are  exaggerated,  and  sets  about  to  reduce  the  swell- 
ing.    For  this  object  it  has  two  methods,  which  we  might 


144  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

venture  to  call  those  of  the  buffer  and  of  the  shunt.  Either 
it  minimises  the  collision,  or  it  runs  the  trouble  on  to  a  loop 
line  which  debouches  further  ahead  into  the  main  line  up. 
It  ascribes  a  good  deal  to  imagination  with  its  habit  of 
exaggerating,  or  it  shows  the  evil  curving  round  to  good 
and  flowing  into  the  general  weal.  By  which  I  mean 
more  expressly  this. 

1.  The  first  effort  of  a  philosophic  theodicy  is  to  ease 
the  jar,  and  reduce  the  impact  of  the  perverse  fact  on  the 
general  mass.  The  assault  on  the  beneficent  scheme  of  the 
world  is  admitted,  but  it  is  less  than  it  seems,  especially 
less  than  it  seems  to  the  victims.  And  it  may  not  be  so 
great  as  we  think  even  within  the  consciousness  of  God, 
which  holds  in  it  but  the  best  of  worlds.  The  Lisbon 
earthquake,  for  instance,  was  explained  away  by  the 
optimism  of  the  time  as  no  more  than  a  condensation  of 
normal  suffering,  a  precipitation  of  it  at  one  spot — as 
on  the  other  side  the  wide  creative  processes  of  growth 
could  be  condensed  into  a  miracle  hke  the  muitipljdng  of 
the  loaves. 

But  this  is  a  treatment  of  evil  which,  when  applied  to 
its  worst  form,  moral  evil,  is  resented  by  the  soul  and 
conscience.  The  conscience  especially  has  always  pro- 
tested against  the  comfort  got  by  minimising  sin,  whose 
shock  to  God  cannot  be  reduced  without  reducing  His 
holiness  pro  tanto.  Even  our  personality  has  a  sense  of 
shock  and  damage  to  it  from  evil  too  severe  and  deep  to 
be  met  by  pooh-pooh  treatment  from  the  morbidly  robust, 
the  ideally  vague,  the  morally  dull,  or  the  sentimentally 
keen — a  treatment  which  comes  to  a  popular  head  in 
what  is  called  Christian  Science.  Pain  is  not  abolished 
by  denying  it — except  in  certain  individual  cases  where 
the  denial  superinduces  a  more  or  less  hypnotic  state 
by  auto-suggestion.  And  the  reaction  of  the  personahty 
against  such  consolations  goes  so  far  that  it  tends  to 
bound  into  the  extreme  of  pessimism,  or  a  denial  of  any 


vm.]  PHILOSOPHICAL  THEODICY  145 

possible  mitigation,  any  justification,  any  fundamental 
teleology.  This  ends,  of  course,  in  the  hope  for  a  return 
to  the  unconscious  chaos  from  which  the  world  should 
never  have  blundered  out  in  the  original  sin  and  fall  of  all. 
But  that  pessimism  again  is  resented  by  the  personality 
on  other  grounds. 

2.  So  recourse  is  had  to  the  second  method,  which  is 
not  to  soften  the  collision  by  a  buffer  but  to  avert  it  by  a 
shunt.  The  grievance  is  turned  into  a  loop  line,  which 
further  on  restores  it,  after  some  delay,  to  the  main  line  of 
harmony.  Banes  are  boons,  indirect  or  inchoate.  Grief 
is  but  joy  misunderstood.  Evil  is  but  good  in  the  making. 
And  pain  is  but  friction  or  detour  on  a  course  which  is 
on  the  whole  right.  It  is  a  tack  to  windward.  The  un- 
toward is  only  a  long  and  tedious  curve  into  our  blessed 
place  in  the  whole.  And  the  curve  itself  is  still  in  the 
whole. 

This  view  is  more  or  less  pantheistic,  and  its  monism 
denies  the  reahty  of  evil,  as  duaHsm  denies  the  Sover- 
eignty of  God.  Like  the  other,  the  '  buffer,'  solution,  it  is 
resented  by  the  moral  personality.  It  starts  with  the 
whole,  which  is  the  true  good,  and  where  we  must  reso- 
lutely live.  It  reduces  the  individual  therefore  to  a  resolute 
subordination.  The  universal  State  polices  the  citizen 
to  his  place.  The  blow  or  the  ache  is  called  but  growing 
pains,  or  features  inevitable  in  the  settling  of  the  atom 
into  this  world,  where  they  are  but  the  squeeze  at  the 
door.  The  pain  is  due  to  our  impatience,  our  imperfect 
vision,  and  our  partial  treatment  of  an  evolving  process. 
The  right  sense  of  the  blessed  whole  would  be  an  anod5Tie 
submerging  our  contributory  pain.  If  we  rose  to  that 
philosophic  height  we  should  '  triumph  in  a  conclusive 
bliss,'  whereas,  on  the  low  levels,  we  '  ache,  smallness  still, 
in  good  that  knows  no  bound.'  But  this  cosmic  elevation 
is  not  every  man's  affair,  and  pain  and  guilt  are.  And, 
in  the  failure  of  such  a  nepenthe,  the  mind  falls  again  to 


]46  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

pessimism  from  another  side,  despairs  of  any  teleology 
or  theodicy,  and  again  comes  to  hope  but  in  a  dissolution 
of  reason,  and  a  Nirvana  in  chaos. 

So  the  philosophic  theodicies  are  apt  to  break  in  our 
hand  when  applied  to  the  last  anomalies  of  the  soul, 
and  to  die  of  their  own  dialectic.  Our  faith  ia  God's 
care  for  the  individual  does  not  arise  from  our  faith  in 
His  care  for  the  whole.  It  is  the  other  way.  It  is  true 
that  His  care  for  me  is  the  source  of  my  faith  in  His  care 
for  the  world.  I  am  saved  in  a  saved  world.  '  O  Lamb 
of  God,  that  takest  away  the  sin  of  the  world,  have  mercy 
on  we.'  But  it  was  my  salvation  that  brought  home  to 
me  how  deep  it  was  grounded  in  the  salvation  of  a  world. 
And  I  am  not  saved  by  my  place  in  the  whole,  but  by 
my  place  in  Him  who  redeemed  the  whole.  You  may 
of  course  speak  of  a  best  of  all  worlds  while  you  deny  a 
providence  individual  and  momentary.  But  if  you  do, 
you  are  only  inverting  the  error  of  those  who  speak  of  the 
salvation  of  a  very  few,  and  the  consignment  of  the  world 
at  large  to  neglect  or  destruction.  You  are  contradicting 
yourself.  If  the  world  of  trifles  has  no  providence,  and 
is  the  region  of  accident,  the  world  can  neither  be  good 
nor  permanent.  There  is  nothing  casual  to  the  good. 
Trifles  flow  from  eternal  laws,  and  it  is  Providence  in  the 
minute  that  makes  the  whole  good.  The  Crucified  was 
amongst  the  most  despised  things  of  earth  in  that  hour ; 
but  He  has  become  to  the  soul  that  which  carries  also  the 
burden  and  future  of  the  whole  world. 

There  is  a  Christian  way  of  presenting  a  theodicy  of 
salvation,  which  is  considerably  affected  by  the  philo- 
sophical method.  It  tends  therefore  to  be  a  theosophy 
rather  than  a  theology,  rooted  in  a  thought  or  idea  instead 
of  an  act  and  its  experience.  And  by  this  leaning  it  has 
enjoyed  much  vogue  amongst  those  who  desired  to  specu- 
late from  a  Christian  and  revel ationary  basis.     It  did  not 


vm.]  PHILOSOPHICAL  THEODICY  147 

identify  revelation  with  redemption  but  treated  it  as  the 
larger  thing,  to  which  redemption  was  but  ancillary. 
So,  starting  from  this  base,  it  constructed  a  scheme  of  the 
world  without  reference  to  sin.  It  felt,  soundly  enough, 
that  sin  and  evil  did  not  possess  the  right,  and  therefore 
had  not  the  power,  to  thwart  for  ever  God's  plan  and 
destiny  for  mankind.  But  it  tended  to  underestimate 
what  power  they  did  have,  to  construe  revelation  out  of 
relation  to  them  (as  if  sin  affected  but  a  section  of  the 
personality),  to  find  it  in  the  process  of  rational  nature 
or  the  verdict  of  the  genial  soul,  and  not  in  the  crisis  of  our 
last  distress  and  central  tragedy,  to  handle  sin  in  the  course 
of  a  wider  sweep,  as  the  weed  goes  down  under  the  swath 
that  harvests  the  com.  It  belittled  the  treatment  of  guilt 
to  a  healing  rather  than  a  judgment  and  a  new  creation. 
It  was  very  noble,  but  it  lacked  incisive  moral  realism. 
It  dilated  our  horizon  but  it  did  not  search  to  our  marrow. 
It  was  in  soul  too  pure,  perhaps  in  blood  too  poor,  to 
feel  the  sting  of  sin,  its  burning  stound  and  deadly  wound. 
Its  conception  of  the  holy  was  perhaps  too  celestial  and 
passionless  to  gauge  duly  the  reaction  on  sin  in  the  Passion 
of  Christ.  It  grasped  the  notion  of  reconciliation  as  the 
nature  of  God's  ideal  process  in  all  things,  but  it  did  not 
give  its  full  value  to  redemption.  It  did  not  found 
reconciliation  in  the  redemption  of  man  or  the  atone- 
ment to  God  (2  Cor.  v.  19  and  21).  Its  object  was  to 
justify  God,  as  it  showed  by  refusing  to  sin  the  thwarting 
power  I  have  named,  but  it  might  be  said  to  have  failed 
to  glorify  God,  through  its  underestimate  of  sin's  maUgnity 
and  inveteracy  which  He  overcame  only  in  a  crisis  of 
Eternity  itself.  It  could  not  appreciate  the  passionate 
tragedy  and  slavery  of  man's  combined  love  and  hate  of 
sin.  It  loved  in  Romans  viii.,  but  it  had  not  got  there 
through  Romans  vii.  That  is,  it  made  more  of  the  grand 
and  noble  than  of  the  holy,  and  it  did  not  treat  sin's  an- 
tagonism to  holiness  as  killing  the  life  of  God  in  the  eye. 


J48  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

It  justified  God  by  its  effort  to  picture  a  world  of  love 
and  order  without  sin,  and  by  trusting  the  healing  and 
recuperative  power  of  this  grand  moral  cosmos  in  God's 
hand,  its  power  to  reconcile  all  that  marred  it,  as  nature 
blooms  again  upon  the  bloodiest  field.  This  sinless,  sub- 
duing, reconciling  order  of  the  world  it  saw  emerging 
with  commanding  power  in  the  history  of  revelation, 
and  starting  there  its  last  stage  in  the  conquest  of  evil 
for  God's  will.  But  it  is  doubtful  if  by  its  conquest  more 
was  really  meant  than  its  submersion.  The  drastic, 
tragic  element  of  judgment  was  missing.  The  critical 
nature  of  the  conflict  was  hardly  realised  in  any  way 
adequate  to  a  belief  that  to  destroy  sin  cost  God  His  life 
in  His  Son.  The  conception  of  life  and  of  the  world  was 
too  speculative,  too  processional,  and  too  little  dramatic. 
Things  were  not  done  there.  Will  and  conscience  did  not 
come  by  their  own.  The  world  was  not  God's  Act  so  much 
as  His  Movement.  Vitality  took  the  place  of  action,  pro- 
cess of  crisis,  sanity  of  tragedy.  The  process  of  the  world 
was  an  extemalisation  of  the  process  in  God.  It  reflected, 
spread  out  in  time,  that  balance  of  movements  and  ten- 
sions which  was  the  eternal  stability  within  the  divine 
nature  itself.  And  it  believed  that,  in  due  course  of  this 
process,  the  Son  would  have  become  incarnate  whether 
sin  had  entered  or  not,  though  in  another  and  happy  form, 
corresponding  to  the  essential  divinity  of  human  nature. 
It  worked  with  natures  rather  than  wills.  It  was  in 
human  nature  that  sin  made  most  havoc  of  the  divine 
order.  Sin  was  a  flaw  there  rather  than  a  vice  of  will. 
But  it  could  not  destroy  God's  order  there  ;  and  the 
divineness  of  all  things  was  so  continued  in  even  fallen 
man  that  it  must  in  course  submerge  and  transmute  evil 
as  the  oyster  divinely  turns  the  grit  to  a  pearl.  Theology 
could  not  therefore  in  this  view  be  organised  from  the  one 
centre  of  grace.  Soteriology  was  not  the  focus  and  genius 
of  all  revelation.    Man  is  indelibly  the  summit  and  com- 


vin.]  PHILOSOPHICAL  THEODICY  149 

pendium  of  nature  as  God  made  it.  Therefore  a  God-man 
is  possible  as  the  very  core  of  that  compendium,  as  the 
node  of  the  mutual  involution  of  Godhead  and  finite 
nature.  In  Him  was  crowned,  under  historic  conditions, 
the  process  in  God  which  was  reflected  in  creation.  The 
first  creation  was  brought  to  a  head,  rather  than  a  new 
creation  begim. 

It  is  of  course  rather  a  serious  thing  to  think  of  the 
Incarnation  as  the  consummation  of  a  process  whether 
within  God,  or  within  the  world,  or  both  ;  a  process  whose 
composure  is  affected  but  not  fatally  perturbed  by  sin, 
in  which  sin  is  not  utterly  damning  and  damnable,  only 
deplorable  and  dreadful ;  a  process  which  moves  on  to  a 
growing  but  hardly  redemptive  reconciliation,  of  a  more 
or  less  ideal  cast.  It  all  tends  to  make  the  agony  of  the 
Cross  gratuitous,  the  judgment  in  it  but  collateral,  the 
wrath  of  God  a  metaphor,  and  the  horror  in  the  guilty 
conscience  overdone.  There  is  something  anaemic  about 
the  th,eor3^  something  which  leads  its  sentimentalists 
to  feel  '  the  blood  of  Christ '  to  be  now  a  vulgar  phrase. 
There  is  a  tendency,  almost  irresistible,  away  from  life's 
dramatic  passion  and  tragic  realism  to  a  pantheistic 
cheapening  of  the  personality,  which  is  paradoxically 
concurrent  with  the  equally  imchristian  deification  of 
Humanity  as  a  whole.  It  leads  to  the  view  of  sin  which 
is  much  in  vogue  in  cultivated  religion  with  an  antitheo- 
logical  bias — as  something  that  has  on  the  whole  had  too 
much  attention,  something  that  is  but  elemental  instinct 
lingering  on  in  a  higher  stage,  and  that  is  really  but  a 
remora,  or  drag,  on  Humanity,  rather  than  its  death  and 
hell.  Sin  becomes  something  that,  if  it  cannot  be  ex- 
plained away,  yet  yields  to  elimination.  It  is  a  clot  that 
can  become  absorbed  in  the  circulation.  It  does  not 
involve  death  and  rising  again  in  a  new  creation.  And  it 
might,  by  due  skill,  even  be  shown  to  have  been,  to  the 
great  course  of  things,  a  blessing  in  a  deep  disguise. 


150  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

The  defect  of  this  view  is  that  it  is  theosophic  and  not 
theological,  because  it  has  more  philosophy  than  gospel, 
and  it  is  less  than  scriptural.  It  begins  with  a  wisdom 
instead  of  a  work,  with  an  impressive  theory  rather  than 
a  saving  fact.  It  gives  our  knowledge  a  fresh  departure 
in  Christ,  but  not  our  world.  From  the  Cross  a  reconciled 
world  is  construed  but  not  created.  It  starts  not  from 
the  Cross  but  from  a  scheme  of  the  world  suffused  wdth 
Christ  and  taking  the  Cross  by  the  way,  as  if  a  point  might 
come  when  it  might  be  forgotten  in  the  larger  consumma- 
tion. It  begins  with  the  first  creation  rather  than  the 
second,  with  spiritual  nature  rather  than  Gospel  grace ; 
whereas  the  New  Testament  works  back  to  the  first 
creation  from  a  foundation  in  the  second ;  and,  if  it  speak 
speculatively  of  a  world  created  in  or  by  Christ,  it  is  with 
a  logic  forced  by  the  new  and  greater  creation  in  Him,  tha 
only  creation  we  can  experience.  It  is  an  inference  from 
the  new  world  realised  by  experience  alone  about  a  region 
where  experience  is  debarred. 


n.]  THE  CROSS  CRUCIAL  FOR  DESTINY  151 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE    ETERNAL  CRUCIALITY   OF   THE   CROSS   FOR  DESTINY 

I  MADE  use  in  the  last  lecture  of  a  phrase  which  I  fear 
may  sound  to  some  minds  objectionable,  not  to  say  offen- 
sive ;  and  especially  perhaps  to  those  reared  in  the  type 
of  theology  which  I  have  just  described,  with  its  theo- 
sophic  theodicy.  I  spoke  of  the  victory  over  evil,  cos- 
mical  or  ethical,  as  costing  God  His  Life.  And  the  phrase 
certainly  brings  the  issue  with  that  style  of  theology  to  a 
head.  Of  course  there  is  a  sense  in  which  it  is  nonsense. 
In  the  literal  sense  the  death  of  God  would  leave  the 
victory  with  the  enemy  of  God.  H  God  could  be  abolished 
there  could  have  been  no  real  God.  But  the  theologian 
knows  that  there  is  a  sense  in  which  the  phrase  is  not 
nonsense,  but  it  gives  effect  to  the  absolute  antichrist  of 
sin.  It  expresses  that  in  sin  which  brings  the  issue  be- 
tween evil  and  God  to  the  sharpest  issue  of  the  moral  world 
— indeed  to  the  absolute  issue  of  the  universe,  and  which 
taxes  the  whole  resource  of  the  divine  omnipotence  in 
grace.  Sin  is  the  death  of  God.  Die  sin  must  or  God. 
Its  nature  is  to  go  on  from  indifference  to  absolute  hostility 
and  malignity  to  the  holy;  and  one  must  go  down.  There 
is  no  compromise  between  the  holy  and  the  sinful  when 
the  issue  is  seen  from  the  height  of  heaven  to  the  depth 
of  hell,  and  followed  into  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  soul. 
And  that  is  the  nature  of  the  issue  as  it  is  set  in  the  Cross 
of  Christ.  It  is  the  eternal  holiness  in  conflict  for  its  life. 
In  the  Son  of  God  the  whole  being  of  God  is  staked  upon 


152  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

this  issue,  and  His  whole  campaign  with  the  world  ;  it  is 
not  one  battle  alone ;  nor  is  the  sin  He  met  but  one  of 
many  foes.  In  this  conflict  the  righteousness  of  God  is 
either  secured  or  lost  to  the  world  for  ever.  It  is  a 
question  of  a  final  salvation  both  for  man  and  for  God. 
God  there  must  '  save  His  word,'  which  is  His  Kingdom, 
which  is  His  Godhead ;  else  the  realm  of  Satan  takes  its 
place  in  control  of  the  world. 

Of  course  when  we  speak  of  sin's  death  and  God's 
there  is  a  certain  play  upon  the  word.  All  sin  inflicts 
a  death  on  God.  It  is  a  diminuiio  capitis.  It  reduces 
His  headship.  It  imposes  on  Him  a  limitation  which  is 
quite  unlike  all  His  other  determinations  in  that  it  is  not 
self-determined,  and  is  therefore  absolutely  intolerable. 
If  His  self-determining  power  were  not  capable  of  a  deter- 
mination mightier  than  the  alien  one  from  sin,  sin  would 
conquer,  and  death  would  reign.  But  the  meaning  of  the 
Incarnation  is  that  God  was  capable,  in  His  self -emptying 
in  Christ,  of  a  self-limitation,  i.e.  a  self-mastery  of  holy 
surrender,  whose  moral  effect  was  more  than  equal  to 
the  foreign  invasion  by  sin.  He  died  unto  sin,  as  man 
dies  by  it.  But  of  course  death  has  not  the  same  sense  in 
each  case.  God  carries  death  as  a  blessed  sacrifice.  Sin 
carries  it  as  an  entail  of  curse.  Divine  death  is  moral 
surrender  to  sin's  conditions  but  not  to  its  nature.  It  is 
an  exercise  of  moral  strength  and  resource  which  increases 
life  in  losing  it ;  whereas  the  only  death  at  sin's  command 
is  decay  and  destruction.  All  sin  aims  at  a  destruction  of 
God,  which  His  eternal  holy  life  repels  ;  were  it  unrepelled 
by  the  reaction  of  judgment  it  would  extinguish  God. 
But  the  reaction  and  the  judgment  is  that  of  loving  holi- 
ness. It  is  saving  judgment.  His  holiness  so  dies  as  to 
inflict  on  sin  a  death  which  it  has  not  power  to  repel. 
There  is  an  experience  of  death  that  destroys  its  deadly 
power.  God's  moral  {i.e.  His  holy)  power  converted 
death  itself  from  the  destructive  service  of  sin  to  His  own 


IX.]  THE  CROSS  CRUCIAL  FOR  DESTINY  153 

redeeming  service.  God  in  Christ  so  died  that  sin  lost 
its  chief  servant,  death,  which  became  now  the  minister 
of  Ufe,  so  that  its  miiversal  curse  became  miiversal  bless- 
ing. Sin,  therefore,  cost  Godhead  not  Its  existence  but 
Its  bHss.  It  cost  the  Son  of  God  not  His  soul  but  all 
that  makes  life  a  conscious  fullness  and  joy.  It  cost  Him 
the  Cross,  and  all  that  that  meant  for  such  a  life  as  His. 
God  in  Christ  so  met  the  one  enemy  as  to  turn  upon  him 
His  own  weapon  of  death.  God  so  died  as  to  be  the  death 
of  death.  He  commands  His  own  negation — even  when  it 
pierces  as  deep  within  Himself  as  His  Son.  He  sur- 
mounts the  last,  the  most  limiting,  phase  of  finitude — 
evil.  He  could  so  identify  Himself  with  sin  and  death, 
His  absolute  antitheses,  that  He  conquered  and  aboUshed 
both,  in  an  act  which  brings  to  a  point  the  constant  victory 
of  His  moral  being.^  The  destiny  of  the  world  is  what- 
ever does  most  justice  to  the  nature  of  God,  and  most 
glorifies  it.  And  that  is,  of  all  things  in  the  world,  the 
atoning  Cross  of  Christ — where  therefore  the  teleology 
and  the  theodicy  of  the  world  lies. 

Much  of  our  trouble  with  the  theodicy  of  history  has 
its  root,  not  in  a  defective  view  of  the  connection  or  causa- 
tion of  events,  but  in  either  a  poor  sense  or  a  false  per- 
spective of  moral  values,  even  within  Christianity  itself. 
May  I  venture  here  to  expand  what  I  said  in  the  overture 
to  this  book  ?  There  are  plenty,  perhaps  a  majority, 
of  Christian  people  who  would  view  it  as  a  theological 
extravagance  to  be  told  at  the  present  moment  that  the 
greatest,  the  most  tragic,  the  most  portentous  occurrence 
of  all  man's  aching,  bloody,  and  tragic  history  is  the  death 
of  Christ ;  that  it  is  not  only  the  most  monstrous  but, 
rising  to  the  region  of  moral  values,  it  is  the  most  criminal 
thing  that  was  ever  done  in  the  career  of  Humanity ;  that 
it  outweighs  in  gravity  and  in  wickedness  all  that  men  or 

1  This  line  of  thought  is  pursued  with  fine  and  deep  suggestion  in  Hegel's 
Eeligionsphilosophie,  ii.  249  ff.     Only  some  caution  is  required. 


154  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

nations  have  done  or  can  do — were  even  the  whole  world 
Avithout  exception  involved  in  suicidal  war.  The  eye  of 
God,  ranging  the  waj^s  of  men,  and  reckoning  their  good 
and  evil  as  only  the  Holy  can,  turns  from  every  crime  and 
every  conflict  on  whatever  scale — nay,  turns  from  every 
other  moral  achievement  in  the  race,  to  rest  upon  the  Cross 
of  Christ  as  the  spot  where  He  has  set  His  name  for  ever, 
where  He  has  His  eternal  delight,  and  where  He  finds  Him- 
self (in  the  only  sense  in  which  Christ's  God  can)  for  ever 
and  ever.  As  He  saved  man  there  for  Eternity  He  has 
also  judged  man  there  for  Eternity  ;  but  also  there,  bear- 
ing Himself  the  judgment  of  His  own  holiness,  He  has 
brought  in  an  eternal  righteousness  by  a  way  which  shows 
Him  as  not  outdone  in  suffering  or  sacrifice  by  any  or  all 
of  the  victims  of  the  whole  pain  and  wickedness  of  the 
world.  He  thus  puts  Himself  into  a  theodicy  which 
hallows  His  name  for  ever  as  just  and  good  in  face  of  all 
the  sin  or  evil  possible  to  the  most  satanic  power.  But 
if  this  be  extravagance,  it  is  extravagant  only  as  the  re- 
lation of  an  infinite  God  to  a  finite  world  must  always 
be,  and  as  it  is  the  height  of  extravagance  to  say  at  this 
moment  that  with  God  on  His  throne  ail  is  well  with  the 
world.  Yet  He  has  the  evil,  even  of  such  a  world  as  we 
see,  in  the  hollow  of  His  hand.  That  is  the  Christian 
faith.  If  His  holy  way  spared  not  His  own  Son,  i.e.  His 
own  Self,  that  holiness  is  secured  finally  for  the  whole 
world,  with  its  most  cynical  immorality,  deadly  malignity, 
and  cruel  frightfulness.  The  greatest  of  all  Powers  over 
the  world  suffered  most  for  it.  For  Christ  went  to  the  Cross 
as  King  of  the  world,  and  not  simply  as  the  kingliest  figure 
in  it.  He  went  to  the  Cross  as  King,  He  did  not  simply 
come  out  of  it  as  King.  He  died  as  a  King,  He  did  not  so 
die  that  He  rose  a  King.  That  is  the  Christian,  the  apos- 
tolic, sense  of  His  historic  value.  These  I  say  may  seem 
extreme  views,  couched  in  extravagant  rhetoric  which 
jars  upon  minds  of  a  different  type,  training,  or  experience, 


IX.]  THE  CROSS  CRUCIAL  FOR  DESTINY  155 

minds  arrested  upon  the  sanity  instead  of  the  tragedy  of 
the  world.  But  then  what  is  a  thing  Hke  a  war  that  re- 
nounces moral  and  humane  controls,  but  the  most  ex- 
treme shock  to  our  rational  culture  and  ethic  ?  And  it 
is  no  rationality  of  the  world  that  can  deal  with  it.  Such 
a  historical  situation  as  we  now  live  in  need  not,  perhaps, 
be  accurately  stated,  if  only  it  is  effectively  handled. 
But  if  it  is  to  be  duly  stated  it  cannot  be  in  moderate 
phrase.  Nor  can  it  be  handled  by  moderate  rationalisms. 
It  is  neither  to  be  met  nor  mastered  but  by  the  extreme 
resources  of  God's  action  with  the  world,  and  of  our  own 
faith  in  it.  We  should  have  to  believe  in  God  even  if  the 
war  went  wrong  for  us. 

But  if  we  do  not  regard  what  I  have  said  about  the 
Cross  a»  theological  fantasy  or  preacher's  rhetoric,  but  as 
apostolic  faith  calling  up  its  last  reserves,  then  God's 
Self -justification  in  history  has  in  view  and  in  control 
everything  history  may  show  to  challenge  it.  We  do  not 
here  take  the  quantitative  line  of  striking  a  balance  between 
the  amounts  of  good  and  evil  in  the  world,  but  the  quali- 
tative line,  the  line  of  values,  the  line  of  power  at  a  point 
— which  indeed  is  the  only  line  on  which  we  can  secure 
the  place  in  the  vast  universe  of  that  insignificant  creature 
man.  In  size  he  is  a  dwarf,  in  meaning  he  is  a  god.  The 
victory  of  the  holiness  of  Christ  is  in  command  of  all  the 
moral  phenomena  of  the  world,  good  or  evil.  He  gained 
the  whole  world  in  gaining  His  own  Soul.  If  the  greatest 
act  in  the  world,  and  the  greatest  crime  there,  became, 
by  the  moral,  the  holy  victory  of  the  Son  of  God,  the 
source  not  only  of  endless  blessing  to  man  but  of  perfect 
satisfaction  and  delight  to  holy  God,  then  there  is  no 
crime,  not  even  this  war,  that  is  outside  His  control  or 
impossible  for  His  purpose.  There  is  none  that  should 
destroy  a  faith  which  is  Christian  faith  indeed,  i.e.  which 
has  its  object,  source,  and  sustenance  in  that  Cross  and 
its  victory,  in  which  the  prince  of  the  world  has  been  in 


156  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [CH. 

principle  judged  and  doomed  for  ever.  In  that  Eternal 
Act  (and  by  no  moral  process  only)  the  Father's  name  is 
hallowed,  His  Kingdom  come,  and  His  will  completely 
met  on  earth.  Ajid  we  are  transported  in  spirit  into  the 
region,  not  far  from  any  one  of  us,  where  these  things  are 
always  perfectly  done  and  won.  It  is  a  solemn  and  fortify- 
ing thought  that  interior  to  all  space,  time,  and  history 
there  is  a  world  where  God's  name  is  perfectly  hallowed, 
His  will  fully  done,  and  His  Eangdom  already  come.  That 
region  is  where  we  retire  to  renew  our  moral  certainty, 
behold  a  royal  righteousness,  acquire  a  theodicy  more 
than  rational,  restore  our  spiritual  strength,  and  heal  oar 
soul's  wounds.  To  have  faith  unhinged  by  what  we  now 
see  is  to  confess  that  it  was  a  faith  unfounded  and  unfed 
from  the  eternal  source.  It  is  to  own  that  our  faith 
arose  elsewhere  than  at  Christ's  Cross.  No  wonder  there- 
fore that  a  tTvdlight  comes  on  our  God.  We  have  missed 
His  tryst  in  His  Son,  and  we  think,  as  the  gloom  deepens, 
that  He  is  late.  But  it  is  a  new  mercy  of  God  (as  His 
judgment  always  is)  that  lets  the  false  foundation  sUde 
from  us,  so  that  we  may  stand,  in  its  debacle,  on  the 
Rock  that  nothing  can  shake.  '  But  this  is  escaping  into 
religion.'  Surely.  Is  there  any  other  escape  from  the 
world's  worst  ?  '  But  it  means  the  foundation  of  morals 
in  theology.'  No  doubt.  There  is  no  help  for  it.  There 
is  no  final  ethic  but  a  theological.  When  your  happy 
world  goes  to  pieces,  you  cannot  believe  in  a  moral  world 
except  in  the  faith  of  such  a  revelation  as  took  effect  in 
the  moral  redemption  of  the  universal  conscience,  and 
which  secured  for  ever  the  holiness  of  God  out  of  the 
worst  that  man  can  do. 

With  the  collapse  now  of  a  religion  chiefly  humani- 
tarian there  goes  also  the  '  this-worldliness '  which  has 
been  such  a  bondage  and  a  blight  upon  religion.  WTien 
we  are  startled  out  of  our  satisfaction  with  enlightened 


IX.]  THE  CROSS  CRUCIAL  FOR  DESTINY  157 

man  and  an  exploited  God  by  the  Superman's  super-moral 
attempt  to  come  to  his  own  in  this  world,  we  are  driven 
into  a  new  belief  in  another  world,  in  Immortality.  We 
are  driven  to  find  more  meaning,  and  perhaps  spend  more 
time,  in  God's  realm  of  eternal  lordship  by  love,  His 
righteousness  perfectly  holy,  and  His  universal  grace.  It 
would  be  impossible  to  believe  in  His  love  or  His  Kingdom 
if  we  could  not  call  in  another  world  to  redress  the  balance 
of  this,  or  rather  to  answer  its  groaning  prayer.  Science 
explains  its  universe  by  going  back  to  the  action  of 
infinite  power  for  millions  of  years  ;  but  faith  explains 
its  world  by  going  forward  to  God's  action  in  eternity. 
And  this  it  can  only  do  with  certainty  by  going  down 
as  deep  as  Eternity  is  long — down  into  His  action  in 
Jesus  Christ.  There  is  but  one  point  in  time  where 
the  length  and  the  breadth  and  the  depth  of  the  Eternal 
City  are  equal  :  it  is  the  spot  where,  on  the  Cross,  the  holy 
Son  of  God  is  slain  from  before  the  foundation  of  the 
world  for  its  eternal  redemption.  And,  just  as  history 
shows,  in  the  long  reach  of  time  now  open  to  it,  changes 
which,  passing  from  material  to  moral,  are  qualitative  in 
values  and  not  only  quantitative  in  stiTicture,  so  faith,  in 
the  contemplation  of  eternity,  recognises  a  like  change  into 
the  highest  kind.  The  sacrificia.1  death,  say,  in  battle,  even 
of  those  who  are  not  in  Christ,  must  surely  mean  much 
for  their  approach  to  Him,  and  for  the  opening  of  their 
eyes  to  a  blessing  that  begins  with  fear.  And  the  dead  in 
Christ  see  a  more  wondrous  Christ  than  we  do — the  same, 
indeed,  yesterday,  to-day  and  for  ever,  yet  another.  There 
is  a  new  departure  for  them  in  Christ's  work,  which  is  greater 
than  when  their  eyes  were  opened  to  Him  here,  even  as  the 
second  creation  is  greater  than  the  first.  Christ's  contact 
with  the  dead  is  a  new  and  greater  phase  of  the  new  crea- 
tion. It  makes,  for  the  history  of  the  race  continued  into 
the  unseen,  an  epoch  parallel  to  that  created  by  His  entrance 
upon  flesh  which  made  our  access  to  Him  at  the  first. 


158  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

And  with  the  new  order  of  life  conies  a  new  vision  of 
values,  not  less  revolutionary,  perhaps,  than  when  He 
changed  our  life  in  our  own  earthly  daj^s.  We  may  expect 
there  a  judgment  of  all  past  things  which  is  as  revolutionary 
to  our  present  standards  as  our  conscience  would  seem  to 
the  wild  boar  from  the  woods  which  imperially  devours 
the  more  helpless  denizens  of  the  earth.  More  people  may 
be  converted  beyond  by  the  experience  of  death  than  here 
by  fear  of  it.  There  is  much  mischievous  nonsense  talked, 
and  many  irreverent  pictures  drawn,  about  the  welcome 
by  Christ  of  the  soldier,  whatever  his  manner  of  life,  who 
left  all  and  followed  the  call  of  country  to  death  on  the 
field.  It  was  a  fine  thing  to  do,  but  let  us  not  spoil  it  by 
extravagance  of  this  kind.  There  is  no  true  sacrifice  for 
righteousness  but  has  its  reward.  And  the  chief  reward 
for  such  an  act  may  be  the  gift  of  saving  shame  and  re- 
pentance for  the  life  it  closed.  The  patriotic  sacrifice  may 
have  lifted  the  soul  to  the  level  where  the  steep  slopes 
to  Christ's  Cross  really  began. 

To  our  present  conscience  there  is  no  solution  of  the 
awful  doings  whereof  we  are  compelled  to  be  a  part. 
Yet  it  is  we  who  are  at  a  loss,  it  is  not  God.  We  have 
no  vision  of  a  moral  harmony  that  submerges  misery  and 
evil,  and  spreads  to  order  all,  but  we  trust  One  who  has 
not  vision  only  but  command ;  and  we  have  absolute 
ground  for  trusting  Him  in  Jesus  Christ  the  Agent,  and 
not  but  the  seer,  of  the  world  reconciliation.  Not  only 
can  God  solve  the  world,  He  has  solved  it,  in  His  own 
practical  way  of  solution,  by  saving  it — ^by  an  act  done, 
and  not  a  proof  led,  nor  a  scheme  shown.  His  wisdom 
none  can  trace,  and  His  ways  are  past  finding  out ;  but 
His  work  finds  us ;  and  His  grace.  His  victory,  and  His 
goal  become  sure.  If  we  saw  all  His  scheme  our  faith 
would  be  compelled,  and  not  free.  It  might  do  more  to 
overwhelm  us  than  to  raise  or  fortify.  It  would  be  sight — 
something  too  satisfactory  to  a  merely  distributive  justice ; 


IX.]  THE  CROSS  CRUCIAL  FOR  DESTINY  159 

it  would  not  be  faith  creative  and  constitutive  for  the  holy 
soul.  The  faith  we  keep  means  more  for  our  soul  than  the 
views  we  win.  Job's  friends  had  sounder  views  on  some 
points  than  he,  but  they  did  not  receive  the  reward  that  his 
desperate  faith  had.  In  the  Cross  of  Christ  we  learn  the 
faith  that  things  not  willed  by  God  are  yet  worked  up  by 
God.  In  a  divine  irony,  man's  greatest  crime  turns  God's 
greatest  boon.  0  felix  culpa/  The  riddle  is  insoluble 
but  the  fact  is  sure.  The  new  man,  remade  in  Christ  and 
not  simply  impressed  by  Christ,  is  sure  amid  a  world  of 
strident  problems.  We  know  what  God  has  done  for  the 
world  in  redeeming  it ;  we  have  tasted  that  in  our  soul  ; 
but  we  do  not  know  why  He  took  the  way  with  it  that  He 
did,  why  it  must  mean  the  Cross.  He  speaks  not  an  all- 
solving  but  an  all-liberating  word.  Again,  no  theodicy 
is  possible,  and  no  peace,  except  to  an  evangelical  faith. 

That  is  to  say,  the  only  teleology  is  miraculous.  It  is 
not  catastrophic  like  the  early  eschatologies,  but  it  keeps  the 
element  in  them  which  catastrophe  covered — the  element 
of  crisis  and  miracle.  And  above  all,  it  keeps  the  element 
which  miracle  covered,  the  element  of  grace — the  miracle 
of  miracles.  It  is  a  matter  of  grace.  Nature  is  not  sure 
enough  of  itself  to  promise  its  own  consummation.  Evolu- 
tion is  not  per  se  redemptive.  This  is  especially  borne  in 
on  us  when  we  have  to  do  with  a  moral  teleology,  with  a 
theodicy.  It  is  hard  to  realise  the  moral  destiny  in  nature, 
its  deep  travail  with  the  Kingdom  of  God's  love.  It  is 
still  harder  to  find  this  in  the  range  next  above  nature — 
in  human  freedom,  in  man's  treatment  of  man,  where  we 
have  not  simply  inadequacy  but  perversity.  And  hardest 
of  all  is  it  to  see  it  in  man's  treatment  of  the  saint,  the  man 
of  grace.  Yet  it  is  here  that  the  worst  turns  the  best 
for  our  faith,  and  redeems  all  beside.  It  is  the  persecuted 
saint  that  least  doubts  and  most  trusts  the  goodness  of 
God.     It  was  one  who  felt  himself  treated  by  the  world  as 


160  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

among  the  off-scouring  of  all  things  who  was  sure  that  all 
things  worked  together  for  good  to  them  that  love  God 
for  His  purpose.  Out  of  the  abuse  and  wreck  of  natural 
freedom  rises  the  supernatural  liberty  of  the  sons  of  God, 
with  its  vindication  of  God  in  its  justification  of  man. 
The  grand  purpose  and  justification  of  all  that  went 
before  is  the  righteousness  of  God  secured  by  the  miracu- 
lous grace  of  the  Cross,  its  hallowing  of  God's  name  in  all 
nature  and  history,  and  its  suborning  of  all  evil  to  the 
service,  increase,  and  praise  of  eternal  good.  The  miracle 
of  grace  is  the  rescue  of  a  world  where  rational  order 
failed  to  secure  its  own  end,  yet  found  its  own  soul.  So 
it  is  the  final  theodicy  of  the  world.  The  world  was  made 
for  grace,  made  in  the  first  creation  by  One  who  had  in 
reserve  all  the  resources  of  the  second.  Man  was  made  at 
first  to  be  redeemed  at  last.  Is  this  reality  or  rhetoric — 
moral  reality  or  religious  fancy  ?  Does  God's  holy  love 
come  to  its  own  only  in  His  miracle  of  grace  ?  In  atoning 
grace  does  love  give  law  a  place  of  honour  that  law  failed 
to  secure  for  itself  ?  It  is  the  miracle  of  grace  that 
glorifies  the  law  it  seems  to  break,  by  destroying  the  sin 
that  really  broke  it.  The  miracle  of  the  Cross  broke  no 
law,  but  it  healed  and  honoured  the  law  that  sin  broke. 
The  greatest  law  in  all  things  is  their  deep  and  subtle 
convergence  on  such  miracle.  All  process  serves  per- 
sonality and  its  mysterious  freedom,  and  above  all  its 
freedom  in  grace.  The  miracle  of  the  Kingdom,  the 
conversion  of  the  will,  is  the  '  truth '  of  all  law,  its 
inmost  content  and  eternal  burthen.  Law  is  great  with 
miracle.  It  comes  to  itself  in  it,  blossoms  in  it.  What 
heals  its  wound  reveals  its  nature  as  God's  servant,  mag- 
nifies it,  honours  it,  and  pacifies  all  the  wounds  it  received. 
No  glozing  by  optimism  of  the  hateful  facts  does  what  is 
done  by  their  redemption  in  Christ.  Sin  is  so  sinful  to 
none  as  to  the  Saviour  from  it.  To  mitigate  the  moral 
situation  is  useless.     We  are  shut  up  thoroughly — to  mercy. 


IX.]  THE  CROSS  CRUCIAL  FOR  DESTINY  161 

The  only  theodicy  is  that  which  redeems,  and  from  the 
nettle  perdition  plucks  the  flower  of  salvation.  But  it 
should  be  very  clear  that  redemption  is  not  a  theodicy 
except  by  the  way  of  an  atonement  which  does  justice  to 
God's  holiness  and  the  righteousness  in  things.  Salvation 
is  a  theodicy  only  by  the  way  of  a  justification  which 
places  man  in  the  position  not  of  God's  beneficiary  only 
but  of  God's  son  in  Christ.  And  such  is  the  fullness  of  the 
redemption  of  the  Cross.  It  does  not  simply  place  us  in 
a  warm  fellowship,  and  move  us  to  the  adoration  of  Him 
who  loved  us  and  gave  Himself  for  us  ;  but  it  also  places 
us  in  a  holy  Kingdom,  and  lifts  us  out  of  devout  groups 
to  the  righteousness  which  exalts  nations  in  their  very 
blood,  and  the  holiness  of  God  whose  indwelling  makes  a 
Church. 

I  have  said  much  about  the  certainty  that  we  have  of 
the  great  goal  of  the  world,  on  the  security  of  what  God, 
with  His  eyes  open  to  everything,  has  done  for  it  once  for 
all  in  Christ.  I  have  said  that  this  goal  so  secured  is  not 
simply  the  end  that  all  history  makes  for  in  the  future, 
but  also  the  most  present,  deep,  and  potent  ground  within 
every  stage  of  its  movement  thereto.  That  is  the  work 
of  the  Spirit — to  make  us  realise  the  Simultaneity  of 
Eternity  in  time.  If  we  look  back,  faith,  by  the  Spirit, 
abolishes  time,  and  finds  the  fontal  Christ  of  long  ago 
to  be  the  fundamental  power  of  to-day.  He  rose  upon 
history  in  a  remote  age,  and  He  rises  in  history  now  from 
its  profoundest  depths.  So,  looking  forward,  the  same 
faith,  by  the  same  Spirit,  reahses  His  final  goal  of  the 
Kingdom  to  be  the  deepest  of  all  forces  in  history — retro- 
acting,  shall  we  say,  however  indirectly,  in  every  age. 
The  soul's  future  goal  is  its  present  ground.  Of  all  the 
Great  Powers  the  greatest  is  the  purpose  of  God,  which 
we  are  to  love.  The  Eangdom  of  God  is  the  most  tremen- 
dous power  active  amonj'  us  at   this  moment,   though 


162  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

it  is  conspicuously  working  for  the  time  in  its  negative 
function  of  judgment.     But  it  is  always  judgment  unto 
positive  salvation.     It  is  the  saving  power  that  judges. 
It  is  this  God,  I  have  said,  this   Identity  of   yesterday, 
to-day,  and  for  ever  in  Christ  and  His  redemption,  that 
gives  us  any  faith  in  a  teleology,  and  therefore  (since  He 
is  holy)  in  a  theodicy  in  things.      No   rational  theodicy 
or  philosophic  certainty  is  possible  with  our  knowledge. 
But  faith  is  not  a  poor  second  best,  nor  an  easy  exit.     It 
is  no  small  nor  light  victory  of  faith  to  have  found  our 
footing  in  sach  an  end,  and  to  be  sure  that  good  will  be  the 
final  goal  of  ill.     But,  even  when  we  are  secure  there,  it  is 
hardly  a  less  conflict  and  a  less  victory  to  keep  sure — to  keep 
sure  that  this  is  the  immanent  and  informing  principle 
which  is  working  its  way  to  the  surface  in  history,  whether 
by  process   or   convulsion.     We   have   been  tempted  to 
think  that,  while  the  goal  is  sure,  it  might  perhaps  be 
reached  by  the  destruction  of  the  world,  and  the  salvation 
of  a  very  few  in  some  ark  to  re-stock  the  new  aeon.     It 
costs  faith  much,  when  it  has  become  sure  of  the  goal,  to  be 
sure  also  that  that  goal  is  always  within  us  as  the  greatest 
of  all  the  Great  Powers  that  shape  the  great  politics  of 
history ;  that  it  is  not  regulative  only  for  the  trend  of 
history  but  constitutive  for  its  genius ;  that,  suffusing  all, 
there  is  a  grand  '  stratagem  of  moral  reason '  which  ex- 
ploits the  very  folly  and  crime  of  war,  and  which  we  call 
by  a  better  name  as  '  the  manifold  wisdom  of  God.'     It  is 
not  easy  to  believe  that  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  the  greatest 
Empire  now  in  the  world — and  especially  at  present  is  it 
hard.      But  faith's  greatest  conquest  of  the  world  is  to 
believe,  on  the  strength  of  Christ's  Cross,  that  the  world 
has  been  overcome,  and  that  the  nations  which  rage  so 
furiously  are  still  in  the  leash  of  the  redeeming  God. 

I  came  a  little  ago  to  allude  to  the  value,  for  the  purpose 
of  a  theodicy,  of  the  reality  of  a  future  life.     I  would 


IX.]  THE  CROSS  CRUCIAL  FOR  DESTINY  163 

now  point  out  its  bearing  on  our  view  of  God's  modus 
operandi. 

There  are  two  things  that  faith  must  bear  in  mind 
here  :  first,  that  God's  method  is  revealed  as  one  of  elec- 
tion; second,  that  it  is  one  of  sorrow.  The  Captain  of  the 
elect  was  not  spared  the  Cross.  '  Christ  is  crucified  to 
the  world's  end,'  as  Pascal  says. 

1.  God's  method,  His  way  to  His  goal,  is  that  of  an 
election,  in  which  He  is  absolutely  free.  Any  theodicy 
must  be  much  affected  when  we  cease  to  prescribe  a 
rational  programme  for  the  Almighty  Wisdom,  and  leave 
Him  who  has  the  end  already  secure  to  choose  freely  the 
fitting  way  to  it.  It  is  so  easy  to  set  up  an  expectation 
and  call  on  God  to  comply.  It  is  so  easy  to  frame  some 
high  priori  way,  and  pitch  our  demand  accordingly,  as 
to  what  God  would  do.  It  is  not  so  easy  to  ask  what 
God  has  done,  penetrate  it,  and  accept  His  own  account 
of  His  way  of  doing  it.  I  would  here  return  to  a  note  I 
struck  at  the  outset,  and  put  it  as  pointedly  as  I  can. 

In  the  queet  for  a  theodicy  what  is  it  that  you  are  looking 
for  ?  What  is  it  that  would  justify  God  to  you  ?  You 
have  gro^n  up  in  an  age  that  has  not  yet  got  over  the 
delight  of  having  discovered  in  evolution  the  key  to 
creation.  You  saw  the  long  expanding  series  broadening 
to  the  perfect  day.  You  saw  it  foreshortened  in  the 
long  perspective,  peak  rising  on  peak,  each  successively 
catching  the  ascending  sun.  The  dark  valleys,  antres 
vast,  and  deserts  horrible,  you  did  not  see.  They  were 
crumpled  in  the  tract  of  time,  and  folded  away  from 
sight.  The  roaring  rivers  and  thunders,  the  convulsions 
and  voices,  the  awful  confhcts  latent  in  nature's  ascent 
and  man's — you  could  pass  these  over  in  the  sweep  of  your 
glance.  They  were  subterranean  to  your  calm  purview. 
You  never  lived  through  one  of  these  cosmic  wars.  So  you 
easily  framed  to  yourself  a  long  panorama  of  rising  evolu- 
tion, and  that  steady  crescendo  became  your  standard  of 


164  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

expectation.  You  pictured  the  world  and  the  race  un- 
folding their  powers,  achievements,  and  joys  in  a  waxing 
process  of  beneficent  triumph,  spreading  light,  and  broaden- 
ing boon.  But  now  you  have  been  flung  into  one  of  these 
awful  vallej^s.  You  taste  what  it  has  cost,  thousands  of 
times  over,  to  pass  from  range  to  range  of  those  illuminated 
heights.  You  are  in  bloody,  monstrous,  and  deadly  dark. 
You  taste  an  imspeakable  misery,  which  may  well  make 
you  question  if  any  progress  is  worth  its  cost — especially 
the  progress  that  cannot  forfend  such  misery.  Every 
aesthetic  view  of  the  world  is  blotted  out  by  human  wicked- 
ness and  suffering.  The  air  is  red  as  the  rains  of  hell. 
The  rocks  you  stood  on  fall  on  you.  With  the  expecta- 
tions you  framed  from  your  old  aesthetic  survey  you  bring 
to  book  the  Power  deep  within  it  all.  You  complain  that 
God  has  deceived  you  and  you  were  deceived.  You  see 
no  sense,  no  justice  in  it.  No  general  blessing,  even  when 
peace  returns,  can  atone  for  this.  And  so  on.  God  has 
not  kept  His  promise.  Or  He  has  been  unable  to  pursue 
His  way. 

His  promise !  What  was  it  ?  Your  expectation  ? 
What  right  had  you  to  take  your  expectation  for  promise  ? 
WTiere  did  you  frame  it  ?  His  way  ?  Where  did  you 
discover  that  ?  Evolution  ?  Is  that  His  last  word  ? 
Does  evolution  itself  not  go  on  by  incessant  selection  and 
survival  from  horrors  ?  Have  you  been  putting  all  the 
stress  on  the  evolution  and  none  on  the  selection,  all  on 
the  evolutionary  process  and  not  the  selective  action  ? 
Have  you  been  watching  the  ca«*6er  of  the  cosmos,  and 
ignoring  the  way  of  the  conscience  ?  Is  it  there,  in  the 
world's  long  process,  and  not  in  the  great  providential 
personalities  and  junctures,  that  God  has  been  saying 
His  great  Word  and  opening  His  deep  mind  ?  Have  you 
searched  history  and  its  moral  crises  as  you  should  ?  If 
you  have,  have  you  only  been  looking  at  the  nineteenth 
century  ?    Have  you  taken  due  notice  of  the  first  ?    There 


IX.]  THE  CROSS  CRUCIAL  FOR  DESTINY  165 

is  a  history  within  history  that  comes  to  a  point  there. 
There  is,  within  evolution,  a  history  of  redemption,  where 
selection  rises  to  election,  and,  ceasing  to  be  the  play  of 
powers,  becomes  a  Person's  Act.  Have  you  framed  your 
expectations  on  social  evolution  alone,  with  no  regard  to 
divine  election  ?  Have  you  hoped  for  everything  by  the 
way  of  broadening  permeation,  and  not  at  all  by  the  way 
of  sifting  judgment,  all  by  growth  and  none  by  dilemma  ? 
Has  the  strait  gate  been  removed  from  the  broad  road  ? 
Is  it  all  procession  and  no  agonising  ?  Have  you  been  at 
close  quarters  with  the  movement,  the  actions,  of  your 
own  soul  ?  Have  you  touched  the  nerve  of  its  history  ? 
Have  you  really  been  through  Romans  vii.  ?  Or  is  it  but 
the  aesthetic  splendour  of  Romans  viii.,  its  academic,  its 
imaginative  depth,  that  has  held  you  ?  Have  you  been 
brought,  pastorally  or  otherwise,  in  contact  with  but  one 
of  those  cases  that  represent  the  moral  condition  of  the 
race,  where  one  vice  has  poisoned,  and,  in  the  end, 
paralysed  the  whole  personality,  and,  slowly  mouldering, 
surely  ruined  all  ?  Do  you  know  moral  tragedy,  or  only 
moral  pathology  ? 

Will  you  not  have  to  question  anew  the  real  source 
of  moral  hope,  and  revise  your  expectation  there  ?  You 
may  have  to  give  up  the  idea  of  a  spreading  and  beautiful 
Humanity  as  the  paradigm  of  history.  It  is  not  growing 
like  a  tree  in  bulk  that  makes  man  better.  That  is  but 
a  process,  and  no  mere  process  does  justice  to  human 
freedom  and  moral  worth.  The  soul  goes  through  much 
more  than  a  process.  You  may  have — and  this  dire  experi- 
ence is  what  is  to  make  you — you  may  have  to  take  to  the 
more  slow  and  complex  idea  of  an  elect.  K  you  take  account 
of  your  Bible,  the  text-book  of  the  world's  redemption, 
it  is  what  you  will  find  there.  Salvation  and  election 
are  not  separable  there — a  goal  of  universal  salvation, 
worked  out  by  a  method  of  particular  election.  You 
will  have  to  recast  your  ideas  of  progress  to  meet  the 


166  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

case  of  moral  growth.  That  does  not  come  by  gradual 
expansion,  illumination,  and  amelioration,  but  more  by 
crisis,  choice,  judgment,  sifting,  election,  conversion,  and 
new  departure  by  new  creation  age  after  age — yea,  long 
into  eternity  (for,  as  it  is  a  supernatural  process,  it 
has  not  nature's  limit  of  death).  One  elect  succeeds 
another,  and  each  lives  for  all  in  rising  cycles.  From 
the  non-elect  in  one  stage  comes  the  elect  for  the  next. 
And  so  on,  in  an  ascending  series  of  elects,  till  the  whole 
human  lump  is  refined,  till  all  are  brought  in — the 
worst  and  most  intractable  last,  since  freedom  may  not 
be  forced.  There  is  all  eternity  to  do  it  in.  Here  time 
is  no  longer.  The  ungathered  fruit  of  one  age  yields  seed 
for  the  next.  What  seems  the  wreck  of  one  civilisation 
is  but  the  shaling  of  the  next.  Wliat  seem  to  us  waste 
products  they  have  means  of  using  and  refining  behind 
the  veil.  And  so  the  elective  process  goes  on — the  elite 
serving  the  submerged  in  every  cycle — till  we  all  come 
to  the  fullness  and  quality  of  the  universal  and  eternal 
Christ. 

The  same  fallacy  of  expectation  takes  another  shape. 
We  not  only  formed  our  hopes  on  an  order  of  evolution 
instead  of  a  crisis  of  revelation,  of  revolution,  and  redemp- 
tion, but  we  caught  ourselves  cherishing,  subconsciously, 
and  as  a  matter  of  course,  the  notion  that  the  ends  of 
history  had  come  upon  us.  We  thought  like  this.  If  not 
quite  at  the  end  this  age  is  within  sight  of  it.  We  have 
now  for  a  long  time  had  our  bearings  right  and  our  final 
course  set.  The  grand  social  paradise  has  begun,  in  the 
sense  that  we  all  feel  the  imperative  of  it.  We  have  got 
the  principle  of  it  and  it  has  but  to  be  worked  out  on  the 
lines  of  the  most  enlightened  publicists,  philanthropists, 
and  moralists.  The  closing  cycle  rich  in  God  has  come. 
We  are  now  near  the  top  of  the  toilsome  slope,  and  close 
on  the  plateau  on  which  the  city  of  God  begins  to  rise. 


IX.]  THE  CROSS  CRUCIAL  FOR  DESTINY  167 

The  triumphs  of  civilisation  have  brought  along  the 
wondrous  age.  There  have  been  none  like  it,  scientifically 
or  socially.  We  are  on  the  edge  of  a  new  dispensation — 
of  progress  indeed,  but  of  progress  on  the  level,  of 
expansion,  dilation,  enrichment.  We  have  reached  a 
relative  finality,  and  we  have  but  to  consolidate  and 
exploit  the  ideas  and  conquests  that  development  has 
won  for  good  and  all.  The  glories  of  civilisation  represent 
the  consummation  of  God's  beneficent  plan  ;  they  need 
but  to  be  popularised.  So  we  thought.  That  is  the 
frame  of  mind  we  have  been  living  in,  and  we  have  been 
treating  as  a  postulate  of  all  further  expectation. 

It  has  been  rudely  shaken.  We  are  not  where  we 
thought.  Satan  is  loose  for  a  season.  We  are  not  at 
the  end  of  the  climbing.  A  worse  range  faces  us.  If  we 
were  at  the  end  of  a  stage  it  was  but  on  one  line  of 
advance.  CiviHsation  has  but  thrust  one  long  salient  into 
barbarism,  and  it  is  beaten  back.  We  were  going  suspi- 
ciously fast  and  easy.  Because  it  was  a  progress  too 
dashing.  We  did  not  carry  with  us  our  supplies  or  our 
moral  reserves.  We  took  the  ridge,  but  our  supports  did 
not  come  up,  and  we  have  to  retire  with  great  loss.  We 
have  fallen  into  an  ambush.  Our  light  cavalry  have  been 
pulled  upon  their  haunches  at  an  abyss,  and  many  have 
gone  over.  The  rest  have  to  retire  and  pick  up  our  moral 
civilisation,  left  much  behind  by  our  headlong  material 
advance.  And  this  arrest  of  evolution,  this  shock  of  re- 
covery, disaster  though  it  be,  is  in  the  way  of  judgment, — 
so  indispensable  to  the  divine  theodicy.  If  it  is  a  collapse, 
it  is  still  more  the  assertion  of  the  moral  world  and 
its  conditions,  the  irruption  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  We 
had  not  reached  even  a  relative  finality.  Finality  does 
not  come  on  that  line.  In  civilisation  there  is  no  rest. 
It  has  no  Sabbath.  It  would  even  abolish  Sunday.  Any- 
thing like  finality  is  gauged  not  by  mere  advance,  but 
by  our  contact  maintained  with  the  whole  and  its  goal. 


168  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

It  is  only  our  possession  of  the  goal  that  gives  us  any 
means  of  estimating  the  stage,  or  even  calling  it  a  stage, 
and  not  an  excursion  or  a  freak.  But  that  whole,  that 
goal,  is  in  another  world.  It  is  too  great  for  earth.  There 
is  not  room  enough  in  this  world  for  God's  eschatology. 
In  another  world  alone  we  rest  from  our  vertical  ascent, 
so  to  say,  with  its  labour  and  sorrow,  and  we  extend 
laterally.  We  expatiate  on  God's  plane.  We  develop 
inwardly.  We  cease  to  be  the  mere  nomads  of  progress, 
and  we  set  to  acquire  spiritual  wealth,  and  to  build  the 
city  of  God  on  His  shining  tableland.  But  is  that  not 
other- worldliness  ?  No  ;  for  that  other  world  is  not 
future  merely,  but  eternal.  Eternity  is  the  only  safe 
measure  of  progress  ;  and  to  live  there  is  our  only  security 
in  it.  The  whole  of  God's  plan  embraces  past,  present, 
and  future.  It  pervades  our  history,  though  in  another 
world  only  does  it  '  arrive.'  It  is  in  history  but  not  of 
it.  It  emerges  in  history,  but  from  heaven  not  from  earth. 
There  is  a  point  in  the  past  where  it  is  condensed  and 
creative  for  eternity,  where,  as  in  man's  personality,  we 
have  eternity  in  a  point.  It  is  in  Christ,  and  in  the 
crucial  action  of  Christ  on  His  Cross,  which  overcame  the 
world,  and  created  the  new  heaven  and  the  new  earth. 

We  create  difficulties  for  ourselves,  I  say,  by  our  wrong 
start,  by  expectation  formed  at  other  sources  than  God's 
own  account  of  His  profound  and  supreme  way.  We  go 
to  nature  and  we  forget  human  freedom  ;  to  evolution 
and  we  neglect  election  ;  to  history  and  we  leave  out  the 
Bible  ;  to  the  heart  and  we  succumb  to  subjectivism  and 
ignore  Christ ;  to  love  and  we  omit  its  preferential  and 
selective  way.     And  hence  these  troubles  and  these  tears. 

2.  But,  second,  the  method  of  election  might  be  granted, 
on  the  large  lines  of  eternal  process  that  I  have  drawn, 
and  yet  the  question  remains  as  to  suffering.  Why  such 
dreadful  and  ineffable  suffering  along  the  whole  course, 
suffering  both  of  those  taken  and  those  left  ?     Why  does 


IX.]  THE  CROSS  CRUCIAL  FOR  DESTINY  169 

it  cost  so  much  at  every  stage  to  elicit  the  elect  ?  And 
why  does  it  cost  not  only  to  the  elect  but  to  those  who  do 
not  seem  elect,  and  do  not  inherit  the  far-off  interest  of 
their  tears  ? 

To  that  question  less  even  than  to  the  former  is  there 
any  rational  answer,  except  in  so  far  as  real  faith  is  im- 
pHcitly  rational.  There  is  an  Eye,  a  Mind,  a  Heart, 
before  Whom  the  whole  bloody  and  tortured  stream  of 
evolutionary  growth  has  flowed.  We  are  horrified,  be- 
yond word  or  conception,  by  the  agony  and  devilry  of 
war,  but,  after  all,  it  only  discharges  upon  us,  as  it  were 
from  a  nozzle,  a  far  vaster  accumulation  of  such  things, 
permeating  the  total  career  of  history  since  ever  a  sensitive 
organism  and  a  heartless  egoism  appeared.  This  misery 
of  the  ages,  I  have  said,  vanishes  from  human  thought  or 
feeling,  till  some  experience  like  the  present  carries  some 
idea  of  it  home.  But  there  is  a  consciousness  to  which 
it  is  all  and  always  present.  And  in  the  full  view  of  it 
He  has  spoken.  As  it  might  be  thus :  '  Do  you  stumble  at 
the  cost  ?  It  has  cost  Me  more  than  you — Me  who  see 
and  feel  it  all  more  than  you  who  feel  it  but  as  atoms 
might.  "  Groanings  all  and  moanings,  none  of  it  I  lose." 
Yea,  it  has  cost  Me  more  than  if  the  price  paid  were  aU 
Mankind.  For  it  cost  Me  My  only  and  beloved  Son  to 
justify  My  name  of  righteousness,  and  to  realise  the 
destiny  of  My  creature  in  holy  love.  And  all  mankind 
is  not  so  great  and  dear  as  He.  Nor  is  its  suffering  the 
enormitj^  in  a  moral  world  that  His  Cross  is.  I  am  no 
spectator  of  the  course  of  things,  and  no  speculator  on  the 
result.  I  spared  not  My  own  Son.  We  carried  the  load 
that  crushes  you.  It  bowed  Him  into  the  ground.  On 
the  third  day  He  rose  with  a  new  creation  in  His  hand, 
and  a  regenerate  world,  and  all  things  working  together 
for  good  to  love  and  the  holy  purpose  in  love.  And  what 
He  did  I  did.  How  I  did  it  ?  How  I  do  it  ?  This  you 
know  not  now,  and  could  not,  but  you  shall  know  here- 


170  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

after.  There  are  things  the  Father  must  keep  in  His 
own  hand.  Be  still  and  know  that  I  am  God,  whose 
mercy  is  as  His  majest}^  and  His  omnipotence  is  chiefly 
in  forgiving,  and  redeeming,  and  settling  all  souls  in 
worship  in  the  temple  of  a  new  heaven  and  earth  full  of 
holiness.  In  that  day  the  anguish  will  be  forgotten  for 
joy  that  a  New  Humanity  is  bom  into  the  world.' 

But  all  this  is  groundless  if  in  the  Cross  of  Christ  we 
have  but  the  love  of  God  shown  in  sacrifice  and  not  its 
holiness  secured  in  judgment ;  if  the  Cross  be  but  to  recon- 
cile man  and  not  atone  to  God,  to  impress  many  and  not 
first  to  hallow  the  holy  name. 

I  take  up  here  a  word  to  make  it  clear  that  the  confidence 
of  soul  which  is  called  for  by  the  great  convulsions  of 
history  is  something  more  than  an  intense  but  vague 
reliance  on  the  love  of  God,  even  as  that  is  manifested  in 
Christ.  We  need  more  than  a  general  trust  of  His  heavenly 
kindness.  The  Christian  teleology  of  a  world  like  this 
demands  more  than  a  conviction  of  the  overflowing  good- 
ness of  God's  will  towards  us,  submerging  the  wrath  of  man. 
That  God  is  love  is  a  very  great  faith,  to  be  sure,  as 
things  are.  But  we  need  more.  Has  this  love  all  power 
in  heaven  and  on  earth  ?  Is  it  final  ?  Is  it  eternal  ? 
Can  I  be  sure  that  He  has  power  to  give  His  love  final 
and  eternal  effect  ?  At  the  very  last  pinch  is  His  love, 
perhaps,  helpless  against  the  loveless  power  ?  Is  the  last 
victory  in  any  degree  doubtful  ?  The  faith  which  over- 
comes such  a  world — is  it  just  to  be  sure  of  the  love  of 
God  towards  it,  while  we  have  no  means  of  certainty 
that  this  love  is  identical  with  the  last  reality  and  sove- 
reign power  of  all  things  for  ever  ?  Is  the  Cross  of  Christ 
but  the  manifestation  of  a  love  that  would  certainly  be 
the  blessing  and  joy  of  the  universe  if  it  could  only 
establish  itself  in  it  and  over  it  for  eternity  ?  Must  we 
not  go  further  than  that  with    our  faith  in  the  Cross 


IX.]  THE  CROSS  CRUCIAL  FOR  DESTINY  171 

and  the  Son  of  God,  further  even  than  a  faith  in  Christ 
as  the  Eternal  Son  ?  Is  He  Eternal  King  ?  He  is  such 
de  jure,  will  He  at  last  be  such  de  facto  ?  Is  the  power 
equal  to  the  love  ?  Is  the  King  as  universal  as  the 
Father  ?  Is  the  Kingship  and  its  judgment  a  constituent 
element  of  the  Father  ?  The  soul  in  history,  in  its  ex- 
perience of  the  world,  is  distracted  between  the  spectacles 
of  loveless  power  and  powerless  love.  Power  is  cruel, 
kindness  is  feeble.  This  is  the  observation  that  at  a  great 
crisis  wrecks  the  faith  of  so  many  of  the  finer  kind  who 
can  rest  content  with  neither.  It  is  the  antinomy  in  life 
that  most  needs  adjustment  and  solution  if  we  are  to  believe 
that  God  is  love  and  power  is  grace,  and  omnipotence 
redemption.  And  it  is  that  solution  or  nothing  that  Christ 
brings.  If  He  do  not  bring  it.  He  but  accentuates  the  in- 
tolerable situation.  Love  then  seems  more  helpless  than 
ever,  going  under  to  power;  power  more  heartless  than 
ever  crushing  love.  Must  we  not  go  on  to  find  and  trust  in 
the  Cross  something  more  absolute  even  than  universal, 
something  which  does  not  simply  promise  the  final  victory, 
but  achieves  it,  something  which  is  the  crucial  act  of  the 
world's  King,  and  not  simply  an  act  which  ought  to  make 
Him  that  King,  if  right  had  might.  Has  He  not  only 
value  for  us  but  right,  nor  only  right  but  equal  might  ? 
Is  the  last  enemy  already  destroj-ed  in  the  Cross  ?  Is 
the  last  victory  won  ?  Are  all  things  already  put  imder 
the  feet  of  God's  love  and  grace  ?  Have  we  in  the  Cross 
of  Christ  the  crisis  of  all  spiritual  existence  ?  The  Chris- 
tian religion  stands  or  falls  with  the  answer  of  Yes  to 
such  questions.  In  His  Cross,  Resurrection  and  Pente- 
cost, Christ  is  the  Son  of  God's  love  with  power.  God's 
love  is  the  principle  and  poiver  of  all  being.  It  is  estab- 
lished in  Christ  everywhere  and  for  ever.  Love  so  uni- 
versal is  also  absolute  and  final.  The  world  is  His,  whether 
in  maelstrom  or  volcano,  whether  it  sink  to  Beelzebub's 
grossness  or  rise  to  Lucifer's  pride  and  culture.     The  thing 


172  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

is  done,  it  is  not  to  do.  '  Be  of  good  cheer,  I  hnve  over- 
come the  world.'  '  This  is  the  victory  which  has  overcome 
the  world — your  faith.'  The  only  teleology  is  a  theodicy, 
and  the  only  theodicy  is  theological  and  evangelical. 

If  it  is  needful  that  the  moral  idea  become  still  more 
pointed,  we  must  put  it  that  the  only  possible  theodicy 
is  an  adequate  atonement.  A  mere  vast  and  impressive 
exhibition  of  God's  love  is  not  enough.  The  element  in 
divine  love  which  makes  its  mastery  and  eternity  is  the 
holiness  of  it.  This  is  its  eternal  rock  and  power  if  the 
real  is  the  moral  and  if  morality  is  the  nature  of  things. 
What  must  be  secured  for  the  sake  of  love's  true  deity 
and  last  control  is  its  holiness  ?  But  holiness  is  not  any- 
thing that  can  just  be  shown  ;  it  must  be  done.  Here 
revelation  is  action.  Not  only  must  God's  love  be  poured 
out  on  His  world  but,  as  holy  love,  it  must  be  estabhshed 
in  command  of  it.  The  holiness  of  love's  judgment  must 
be  freely,  lovingly,  and  practically  confessed  from  the  side 
of  the  culprit  world.  It  must  be  answered  with  perfect 
holiness,  i.e.  Tvith  the  Supreme  Act  of  God  and  man  in 
history,  the  Supreme  Act  of  the  world's  King  and  con- 
science. This  wedding  of  man's  conscience  and  God's  is 
the  great  and  final  theodicy.  And  that  took  place  in  the 
atoning  Cross. 

What  do  we  really  want  when  we  ask  for  a  theodicy  ? 
Is  it  not  the  adjustment  in  principle  of  the  state  of  the 
world  and  the  character  of  God  ?  But  the  character  of 
God  we  know  only  by  His  supreme  revelation  of  Himself  ; 
it  is  by  no  inference  or  presumption  of  ours,  by  no  transfer 
of  our  instincts  and  impressions  to  Him.  It  comes, 
therefore,  from  the  objective  revelation  historic  in  Christ ; 
and  chiefly,  where  that  came  to  a  head,  in  Christ's  Cross. 
And  as  to  the  state  of  the  world,  that  means  at  last  the 
moral  state  of  man.  The  wrongest  thing  with  the  world 
is  its  sin.     War,  being  wicked,  is  a  worse  anomaly  than 


IX.]  THE  CROSS  CRUCIAL  FOR  DESTINY  173 

pestilence  or  famine.  If  a  theodicy,  then,  is  called  for  it 
is  because  either  God  seems  to  fail  a  deserving  world  and 
does  not  treat  it  justly,  or  a  iDerverse  world  fails  a  righteous 
God  and  does  not  treat  Him  justly.  Now  anj^  real  Theism, 
and  especially  the  Christian  faith  in  the  Cross,  is  bound 
up  with  the  absolute  holiness  of  God,  and  it  cannot  there- 
fore start  with  a  human  ideal  which  God  is  thought  to 
betray  when  we  bring  Him  to  its  bar.  We  must  begin  with 
a  righteous  God  revealed,  whom  the  world  fails,  renounces, 
and  defies.  This  is  the  religious  view  of  the  world.  The 
other  is  not  religious ;  it  may  be  rational  or  philosophical ; 
and  between  religion  and  philosophy  it  is  not  a  matter 
of  argument  and  its  compulsions  but  of  choice  and  its 
freedom. 

But  if  it  is  a  case  of  a  defective  world  and  a  perfect 
God  in  collision,  a  sinful  world  and  a  holy  God,  then 
the  right  relation  between  them,  the  only  relation  that 
does  justice  to  the  rightness  of  God,  is  the  world's  attitude 
of  repentance  before  the  Holy  and  trust  in  His  grace. 
The  only  rightness  of  a  world  awry  is  the  confession 
of  wrongness.  But  the  further  the  world  is  out  of  tune 
with  such  a  God  the  less  able  is  it  to  realise  its  wrongness 
and  to  repent,  the  less  adequate  is  any  such  repentance 
as  it  has,  and  the  less  sure  can  it  be  that  the  holy  which 
condemns  it  is  also  to  be  trusted  as  grace.  How  can  a 
sinful  world  adequately  confess  in  practice  a  holiness  to 
which  its  sin  makes  it  ever  weaker  and  blinder  ?  How 
can  it  do  justice  to  it  ?  How  justify  God,  or  reahse  what 
would  be  His  right  treatment  of  the  world  ?  How  can  it 
do  honour  to  a  holiness  which  can  be  honoured  and  justified 
by  holiness  alone  ?  How  can  it  answer  with  its  soul  and 
conduct  the  righteousness  of  God's  ?  How  can  God 
secure  His  righteousness  in  the  face  of  such  a  world  ?  He 
can  neither  undo  its  evil  past,  nor  ensure  its  better  future. 
That  is  what  we  want  in  a  real  and  searching  theodicy — 
the  righteousness  of  God  not  only  admitted  but  adored, 


174  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

not  only  dreamed  but  done — and  done  in  a  world  not  of 
suffering  alone  but  still  more  of  sin.  Can  God  so  secure 
His  righteousness  that  the  unrighteous  world  shall  be 
His  praise  ?  Can  He  get  such  a  world  to  call  Him,  from 
the  heart  of  its  evil,  guilt,  and  misery,  and  imder  the 
ban  of  His  judgment,  yet  holy,  wise,  and  good  ?  That 
would  be  the  supreme  theodicy,  the  last  justification  of 
God,  uttered  in  silent  action  by  a  Humanity  that  forgets 
its  own  fate  in  entire  concern  for  His  righteousness  and 
glory. 

But  that  is  what  we  have  in  Christ's  atoning  Cross. 
There  we  have  the  one  perfect,  silent,  and  practical  con- 
fession of  God's  righteousness,  which  is  the  one  rightness 
for  what  we  have  come  to  be,  the  one  right  attitude 
of  the  world's  conscience  to  God's.  In  Him  Humanity 
justifies  God  and  praises  Him  in  its  nadir ;  and  that 
is  the  great  theodicy.  But  if  that  Christ  crucified  do 
justice  to  the  holiness  of  God,  confessing  it,  while  under 
its  judgment,  with  a  holiness  equal  to  the  Father's  own, 
and  offering  amid  suffering  an  obedience  perfect  as  mere 
suffering  can  never  be — then  we  have  the  atonement; 
which  is  not  just  suffering  for  us,  for  suffering,  being 
non-moral  in  itself,  cannot  be  perfect  or  holy  or  satisfy- 
ing to  God.  We  have  then  the  perfect  satisfaction  the 
Holy  finds  in  the  Holy,  and  the  delight  of  the  Father 
in  a  Son  with  whom  He  is  always  well  pleased.  That 
holiness  of  the  Son  of  God  is  the  complete  reparation  to 
the  holiness  of  God  the  Father.  But  if  it  is  made  by 
the  Son  of  God  it  is  made  by  God.  God  could  be 
atoned  by  no  outside  party.  And  the  Father  suffered 
in  His  Son  even  more  than  the  Son  did.  Further,  if 
Christ  was  the  Son  of  man  the  reparation  was  made 
by  man  in  Him.  Christ  was  the  new  Humanity  doing 
the  one  needful  and  right  thing  before  God.  God's 
justification  of  man,  therefore,  was  by  His  justification 
of  Himself  in  man.     The  last  theodicy  is  a  gift  of  God 


IX.]  THE  CROSS  CRUCIAL  FOR  DESTINY  175 

and  not  man's  discovery  nor  an  achievement.  It  is  not 
a  rational  triumph  but  the  victory  of  faith.  Christ  is 
the  theodicy  of  God  and  the  justifier  both  of  God  and 
the  ungodly.     The  supreme  theodicy  is  atonement. 


176  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 


CHAPTER  X 

SAVING    JUDGMENT 

I  HAVE  SO  often  alluded  to  the  tragedy  of  history  as  being 
for  Christian  faith  the  judgment  of  God,  and  therefore  His 
salvation,  that  I  wish  to  speak  of  it  more  than  allusively, 
as  God's  saving  way  with  the  world.  The  more  we  be- 
lieve in  the  Kingdom  of  God  the  more  we  must  believe 
in  judgment. 

The  great  Christian  message  to  the  world  is  not  simply 
love.  That  is  too  general,  not  to  say  vague.  Christianity 
does  not  produce  only  love  to  God,  but  also  hate.  It 
not  only  produces  faith  but  it  also  deepens  unfaith,  and 
hardens  impenitence.  If  it  loose  it  also  binds  ;  and  it 
can  do  the  one  only  if  it  do  the  other — action  and  reaction 
being  equal.  If  it  draw  some  near  to  God,  it  repels  others 
into  distance  and  estrangement.  There  is  such  a  thing 
as  the  repulsive  power  of  a  great  affection.  To  say  that 
the  revelation  is  only  love  is  not  relevant  enough  to  the 
actual  and  moral  situation  of  a  world  which  is  some- 
thing else  than  love-hungry.  Nor  does  it  do  justice  to 
the  New  Testament,  with  its  ruling  note  of  the  holy,  and 
its  supreme  gift  of  a  Holy  Ghost.  The  message  is  to  the 
conscience,  and  it  is  moral  reconciliation.  Such  is  the 
prime  and  positive  revelation — the  holy  God  in  Christ 
reconciling  the  sinful  world  to  Himself.  That  is  to  say, 
the  Christian  Gospel  is  not  simply  to  exhibit  God's  love. 
His  love  might  be  a  helpless  passion  if  he  had  not  an  equal 
power  behind  it.      But  that  power  Christ  exerts.      His 


X.]  SAVING  JUDGMENT  177 

Gospel  secures  not  love's  exhibition  but  its  final  domina- 
tion of  all  things  and  all  foes.  It  does  not  show  some- 
thing ;  it  does  something.  And  in  that  action  judgment 
is  essential.  The  victory  of  grace  in  the  Kingship  of  God 
involves  certain  factors  subordinate,  and,  in  a  sense, 
negative,  though  vital  ;  and  if  reconciliation  is  the 
obverse  of  the  Cross,  judgment  is  its  reverse.  Grace 
and  judgment  were  both  revealed,  and  both  exercised, 
in  the  same  act  of  Christ.  Perfect  grace  was  and  is  final 
judgment.  It  is  condemnation  to  ignore  salvation.  Full 
and  final  judgment  is  not  something  superadded  to  the 
Gospel.  It  is  no  corollary,  no  by-product.  It  is  intrinsic 
to  it.  It  is  an  element  of  Fatherhood,  and  not  a  device.^ 
It  is  an  efifect  of  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel  which  is  organic 
with  the  salvation  in  it.  The  same  Church  that  evangelises 
the  world  in  the  very  act  judges  it.  It  not  only  divides 
each  soul,  but  all  societj^  electing  and  rejecting.  The 
classic  passage  on  the  reconciliation  (2  Cor.  v.  19)  is 
followed,  immediately  and  epexegetically,  by  the  moral 
theme  of  expiation  or  judgment  (v.  21),  without  which 
the  New  Testament  does  not  regard  reconciliation  as 
possible.  So  that,  while  the  ruling  note  of  Christian 
preaching  must  always  be  reconciliation,  judgment  is 
there  as  a  subdominant,  giving  the  reconciliation  its 
quality  as  moral.  The  Cross  did  not,  indeed,  come  directly 
and  expressly  to  judge  (John  viii.  15-16,  xii.  47-48).  It 
did  so  only  in  the  course  of  exerting  (I  wish  to  say  more 
than  reveahng)  God's  love,  grace,  and  forgiveness.  But 
judge  it  certainly  did.  It  brought  to  a  head  for  the 
world  the  sin  of  an  elect  nation — a  nation  whose  sense 
of  privilege  and  merit  repudiated  moral  for  national  in- 
terests,  scouted  Christ's  word  of  mercy  and  His  call  to 

^  The  Grotian  theory  of  Christ's  Cross  as  a  penal  example  or  object- 
lesson,  and  not  a  reaction  of  judgment  intrinsic  to  God's  holiness,  is  a  case 
of  substituting  a  device  of  God  for  an  element  in  Him.  Judgment  is  an 
essential  element  in  Fatherhood,  and  not  a  corrective  device. 


178  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

repent,  and  found  no  public  meaning  in  His  Word  of  love 
and  humility.  It  thus  became,  more  than  Rome,  incar- 
nate Antichrist.  It  sinned  against  pure  light.  The  Cross 
which  that  nation  inflicted  filled  up  the  measure  of  its  guilt 
and  brought  it  death.  And  this  was  not  against  Christ's 
will  but  with  it.  He  knew  He  was  Israel's  doom.  The  Holy 
One  knew  that  the  soul  of  man  or  nation  that  chose  to 
sin  must  go  on  to  die,  and  that  every  word  of  greater  love 
might  become  a  word  of  more  wrath.  But  He  never  judged 
them  in  the  sense  of  avenging,  far  less  of  revenging.  Their 
judgment  was  the  reaction  on  them,  from  God's  holiness, 
of  their  fatal  misconception  of  holiness,  the  recoil  of  their 
egoist  and  self-satisfied  righteousness,  of  their  own  deed 
in  rejecting  a  holy  reconciliation  as  needless,  and  reckoning 
rather  on  reward.  It  was  the  irony  of  a  holy  God  on 
the  sanctity  of  wrong-headed  and  self-sure  worshippers, 
worshippers  full  of  sacrifice  but  of  saltless  sacrifice,  indis- 
criminate sacrifice,  sacrifice  as  a  passion  only,  full  of  ideal 
rage  but  void  of  faith  with  its  moral  insight  and  its  sound 
judgment.  It  was  the  nemesis  on  their  Semitic  hate.  It 
is  valuable  at  this  juncture,  when  the  bearing  of  moral 
principle  on  national  conduct  is  denied  even  by  German 
religion,  to  remember  that  the  greatest  sin  the  world  com- 
mitted was  a  national  and  rehgious  sin,  culminating  in 
national  hate,  and  then  in  national  destruction.  But  the 
heart  of  Christ  is  not  irony,  whatever  use  He  made  of 
irony.  Ajid  though  Providence  is  ironical  it  is  not  irony. 
The  heart  of  all  is  mercy.  That  is  the  supreme  function 
of  the  Cross.  It  is  the  action,  the  omnipotence,  of  grace. 
Sacrifice  is  good  or  bad  as  it  serves  or  hinders  that  moral 
end.  Christ  bore  evil,  He  did  not  avenge  it.  He  so  bore 
it  as  to  judge  and  destroy  it,  which  mere  nemesis,  mere 
punishment,  cannot  do  ;  and  because  it  cannot,  it  is  less 
true  than  judgment.  Christ  certainly  used  force,  and 
gave  it  His  moral  sanction.  He  racked  the  victim  of  the 
unclean  spirits  in  exorcising  them.      He  cowed  His  dis- 


X.]  SAVING  JUDGMENT  179 

ciples,  He  did  not  only  impress  them.  He  preached  hell 
as  in  the  service  of  His  kingdom.  He  *'  hewed  "  the  Phari- 
sees. And  His  prediction  of  Jerusalem's  ruin  in  war  with 
Rome  was  (from  Him)  more  than  a  prediction,  it  was  an 
infliction.  War  as  judgment  is  the  servant  of  righteous- 
ness, and  righteousness  is  the  twin  of  grace.  Crisis  means, 
behind  it  all  and  in  proportion  to  its  greatness,  the  kingdom 
of  God  and  a  new  creation.  The  phrase  '  progress  by 
crisis '  is  the  modem  variant  of  the  old  '  salvation  by  judg- 
ment.' We  seek  first  the  positive  kingdom,  and  there- 
with such  negative  judgment  as  it  requires. 

There  may  even  be  times  when  the  idea  of  judgment 
is  the  more  urgent  side  of  the  kingdom.  There  are 
junctures  when  the  interest  of  the  grand  reconciliation 
requires  that  the  attention  of  the  world  should  be  recalled 
with  iterant  stress  to  the  principle  of  judgment,  however 
contributory  its  place  may  be  in  the  whole  relation.  Of 
such  junctures  the  present  situation  may  be  one.  And 
for  several  reasons.  First,  a  sweet  and  cheery  type  of 
religion  has  come  to  prevail  which  prospers  well,  with  its 
winsome  Christ  and  its  wooing  note,  but  which  (whether 
we  call  it  sentimental,  sesthetical,  or  optimist)  has  all 
but  banished  the  idea  of  judgment  from  the  Christian 
ethics,  just  as  it  deprecates  the  notion  of  atonement  in  its 
pious  t^^e.  This  not  only  departs  from  the  New  Testa- 
ment idea  but  it  is  laden  with  the  gravest  moral  weakness. 
It  must  be  so,  if  religion  at  every  point  is  holy,  if  the 
power  of  the  Gospel  is  the  righteousness  of  God  (Rom.  i.  17), 
if  its  atoning  redemption  of  the  conscience  has  a  vital 
effect  on  morality,  if  the  faith  of  the  Cross  is  the  source 
of  Christian  ethic,  and  at  last  of  all  ethic.  Second,  the 
idea  of  the  kingdom  has  in  the  last  half-century  had 
more  attention  than  result ;  which  is  due  in  part  to  the 
moral  defect  involved  in  its  detachment  from  tliis  idea  of 
righteousness  in  the  Cross  of  Christ.  And,  third,  the 
awful  events  amid  which  we  live  can  by  no  Christian  mind 


180  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

be  treated  merel}^  as  a  crunch  of  progress,  as  the  grinding 
of  the  historical  glacier  turning  a  corner  in  its  onward 
course.  Nor  are  they  merely  a  poisonous  by-product  of 
civilisation.  They  are  an  assertion  of  the  moral  order 
which,  after  all,  controls  civilisation,  so  that  what  it  has 
sowed  it  now  reaps.  They  make  an  apocal^^se,  which 
the  moral  levity  of  our  very  religion  much  needed,  of 
the  awful  nature  of  evil.  They  are,  like  Israel's  part  in 
the  death  of  Christ,  a  revelation  of  Satan  vying  with  that 
of  God.  So  the  wrath  of  God  leaps  out  upon  the  unright- 
eousness of  men.  East  or  West,  the  nations  shall  be  cast 
into  hell  that  forget  a  holy  God.  These  events  form  a 
negative  and  purgative  element  in  the  coming  of  God's 
kingdom  of  reconciliation.  Thej^  are  to  be  integrated 
into  its  aspect  of  atonement,  expiation,  the  solemn  and 
blessed  bearing  of  judgment.  They  are  the  rear  view  of 
the  Cross  of  Christ  and  its  historic  salvation.  And  they 
offer  us,  indeed  they  force  on  us,  an  occasion  to  amend, 
by  fresh  attention,  much  neglect  of  the  Cross  as  the  final 
principle  and  moral  measure  of  all  histor^^  They  set  us 
on  so  to  trace  the  immanence  of  its  action  in  man's  whole 
career  that  we  can  believe  in  a  divine  judgment  in  history 
in  spite  of  history.  If  God  spared  not  His  own  Son  He  can 
bear  to  see,  and  rise  to  use,  the  most  dreadful  things  that 
civilisation  can  produce.  History  is  a  long  judgment  pro- 
cess ;  but  it  is  not  in  the  course  of  history  mth  its  debacles 
that  we  find  the  last  judgment  of  God,  and  fix  our  faith 
in  it,  but  at  a  point  of  history,  in  the  Cross  of  Christ.  It 
is  there  that  we  find  the  justification  of  God  at  first  hand, 
and  His  own  theodicy. 

Judgment  by  God  is  in  the  Bible  a  function  of  His 
action  as  King.  And  to  this  dsiy,  when  the  due  sense  of 
God's  kingship  goes,  the  sense  of  judgment  goes  "v\dth  it ; 
and  the  type  of  religion,  however  winsome,  sinks  accord- 
ingly in  one  kind  to  moral  pusillanimity,  and  in  another 


X.]  SAVING  JUDGMENT  181 

to  racial  ferocity,  as  we  see  these  in  the  German  Church 
on  the  one  hand  and  the  German  State  on  the  other. 
With  the  loss  from  the  heart  of  our  reHgion  of  the  note 
of  judgment  goes  the  sense  of  pubHc  righteousness  and 
national  responsibility  ;  and  therefrom  come  in  the  end 
public  meanness,  madness,  infatuation,  and  collapse. 
A  faith  in  mere  fatherhood  will  not  carry  a  nation's  con- 
science ;  it  will  not  save  it  from  national  egoism  ;  nor  will 
it  serve  the  more  public  ends  of  religion,  however  it  may 
sweeten  its  private  note.  And  it  is  the  public  and  social  \ 
failure  of  religion  that  is  our  chief  trouble  at  this  hour,  / 
either  at  home  or  abroad. 

I  would  say  much  in  Httle  in  venturing  the  opinion 
that  the  favourite  type  of  religion  among  the  cultivated 
and  earnest  youth  of  both  sexes  lacks  moral  nerve  in 
lacking  a  due  sense  of  that  which  (if  I  may  say  it)  grew 
upon  Christ  as  He  drew  to  His  crisis — the  a^viulness, 
the  devilry,  the  inveteracy  of  evil.  The  great  rally  of 
the  youth  of  this  country  to  the  war  showed  that  they 
were  better  than  much  of  their  reKgion.  There  was  a 
glorious  atavism.  The  lack  in  the  type  of  religion  which 
is  apt  to  prevail  among  clean  and  cultivated  youth  is  due 
partly  to  some  absence  of  human  nature,  some  poverty 
of  blood,  and  partly  to  defective  insight  into  the  final  nature 
and  victory  of  the  Cross  over  the  diabolism  and  perdition 
in  the  world.  It  reflects  a  certain  moral  amateurism  due  *^  ^ 
to  the  abeyance  of  a  theology  of  the  Cross.  Such  religion, 
certainly,  loves  the  person  of  Christ.  It  is  in  love  with  , 
His  love,  and  with  His  Cross  as  the  summit  of  that  love 
in  self-sacrifice.  But  it  has  no  room  nor  need  for  judg- 
ment there.  It  does  not  feel  there  God's  judgment  on  sin, 
and  the  crisis  of  the  moral  world  and  of  a  holy  eternity. 
It  needs  moralising  from  a  deeper  experience  of  Hfe — an 
experience  older,  more  secular,  more  tragic.  For  want 
of  a  theology  of  conscience  such  souls  do  not  know  the 
world  nor  gauge  its  redemption.     Their  belief  in  Christ  is 


1S2  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

impaired  for  want  of  a  belief  in  the  Satan  that  Christ 
felt  it  His  supreme  conflict  to  comiterwork  and  destroy. 
This  defect  in  the  finer  religion  is  likely  to  be  repaired, 
and  faith  deepened  and  moralised  by  the  rude  shock  given 
by  the  present  war  to  a  belief  in  human  nature,  and  in 
a  Christ  that  only  appeals  to  human  nature  without 
judging  it,  a  Christ  that  spiritualises  rather  than  regener- 
ates it,  because  He  made  more  sacrifice  for  it  than  to 
God,  and  bore  its  load  more  than  His  judgment. 

Many  who  think  and  speak  much  of  the  kingdom  of 
God  are  yet  averse  to  the  idea  of  judgment  in  any  sense 
as  positive  and  distinctive  as  they  find  the  social  kingdom 
to  be.  They  fasten  on  the  kingdom  as  the  message  and 
task  of  Jesus,  and  they  tend  to  deprecate  the  place  once 
given  to  the  Cross — as  if  Christ  only  died  nobly,  and  did 
not  die  as  King  and  justiciary  of  love's  world.  Yet  at 
other  seasons  they  speak  as  if  they  had  everything  in 
the  Fatherhood  of  God.  They  do  not  observe  that  we 
cannot  get  the  idea  of  a  kingdom  out  of  mere  Father- 
hood, but  only  the  idea  of  a  family  ;  which,  even  when 
associated  Tvith  the  democratic  idea  (as  in  America),  is 
quite  inadequate  to  the  dimensions  and  the  destinies 
either  of  historic  revelation  or  of  historic  humanity ;  and 
it  may  often  in  practice  enfeeble  religion  for  public  effect. 
Tlie  sacred  home  and  the  sovereign  people  do  not,  even 
together,  give  us  the  social  idea  of  Christianity,  or  they 
give  one  which  does  not  rise  above  sociahty,  sunny  piety, 
and  delightful  friendliness.  It  has  not  the  altar  at  the 
centre  of  its  worship.  And  at  no  great  cost  has  it  obtained 
its  freedom.  But  the  religion  of  the  Mass  will  in  the 
end  be  too  much  for  this  piety  of  the  shining  face  if  we 
have  no  more  to  go  upon.  The  Father  of  Jesus  was  the 
Father  in  Heaven,  the  Father  from  above  us  all,  the 
royal,  the  holj^  the  absolute  Father,  of  an  infinite  majesty. 
And  Christ  went  to  His  death  in  His  function  as  King, 
not  to  become  King.     One  of  the  compensatory  boons  of 


X.]  SAVING  JUDGMENT  183 

the  present  calamity  of  war  m.^j  be  to  raise  the  whole 
moral  pitch  of  religion  out  of  the  morass  of  sentimen- 
talism,  brisk  or  dreamy.  And,  among  other  things,  it  may 
reclaim  for  the  absolute  sovereignty  of  God,  and  the 
freedom  of  His  grace,  a  place  from  which  they  have  been 
ousted  by  a  too  individual,  or  domestic,  or  democratic, 
or  egoist  idea  of  Fatherhood.  I  say  egoist,  because  there 
is  a  form  of  Christianity  which  makes  everything  (God 
included)  minister  to  the  worth  of  man,  and  renders 
nothing  to  the  righteousness  of  God.  It  is  humanist  egoism. 
It  is  anthropocentric.  And  Christ  was  theocentric.  Those 
to  whom  I  have  been  alluding  fail  to  see,  first,  that  their 
fatherhood  will  not  give  the  kingdom,  and,  second,  that 
the  kingdom  carried  with  it  the  idea  of  judgment,  and 
not  sacrifice  merely.  Christ  bore  the  love  of  God  to  men, 
but  not  without  its  element  of  wrath — the  saving  wrath 
of  the  Lamb.  For  that  kingdom  which  was  Christ's 
burthen  the  element  of  judgment  is  indispensable,  since  it 
was  a  holy  kingdom.  It  is  the  fmiction  of  a  Kjng  reign- 
ing in  eternal  righteousness  as  it  is  not  of  a  Father.  It 
was  certainly  a  supreme  function  of  the  kind  of  king 
which  was  present  to  an  Oriental  in  Christ's  day,  and 
which  He  used  much  more  than  altered.  For  the  God 
and  Father  of  Jesus  Christ  was  no  more  a  president 
than  a  paterfamilias.  The  idea  is  not  domestic  but  public. 
Even  in  the  New  Testament  the  idea  of  judgment  pre- 
cedes the  establishment  of  the  kingdom,  is  its  negative 
coming,  the  left  foot,  as  it  were,  in  its  march.  Such,  I 
say,  was  the  current  idea  ;  and  it  was  adopted  by  Christ 
for  the  soul,  and  carried  through  with  a  thoroughness 
that  bewildered  His  disciples,  even  to  betrayal  and  de- 
sertion. He  carried  it  to  the  bitter  end  of  the  Cross  and  of 
the  judgment  both  borne  and  exercised  there.  If  we  see 
the  establishment  of  the  kingdom  in  the  Cross  (and  where 
else  did  Christ  profess  to  set  it  up  ?),  if  Christ  was  there 
its  true  creative  King;  and  not  its  mere  proj)het,  then 


184  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

in  the  Cross  must  lie  also  that  element  and  principle  of 
judgment.  It  is  an  element  vital  to  Kingship  and  yet 
alien  to  manj^  in  whose  Christianity  the  kingdom  is 
more  in  evidence  than  in  action,  having  never  been 
worked  in.  That  judgment — that,  and  not  penalty — is 
the  root  of  the  whole  doctrine  of  atonement — so  un- 
mistakably apostolic,  however  we  may  feel  called  to 
criticise  it,  or  be  tempted  to  hold  it  outgrown.  It  is  the 
Self -justification  of  God  in  such  a  world  as  this. 

In  the  Old  Testament  this  Kingship  certainly  implied 
judgment  in  the  interest  of  Israel  as  God's  realm.  And 
this  again  involved  two  things,  one  negative  and  one 
positive.  It  involved,  first,  the  judgment  of  Israel's  foes, 
and,  second,  Israel's  justification,  i.e.  the  public  establish- 
ment of  that  righteousness  for  which  Israel  was  to  stand 
and  suffer.  Nay,  further,  there  was  involved  a  third  thing 
— the  judgment  of  Israel  itself  in  the  interest  of  that  same 
righteousness.  And  this  carried  with  it  both  the  thresh- 
ing out  of  a  small  remnant  of  the  nation,  and  the  use  of 
the  heathen  as  the  divine  flail. 

We  touch  here  a  Scriptural  note  which  to  later  days 
is  somewhat  strange.  It  is  the  note  of  a  joy  in  judgment 
like  the  joy  of  harvest — the  note  so  violently  struck  in 
Wordsworth's  '  Carnage  is  God's  Daughter.'  The  first  idea 
of  such  judgment  is  associated  with  salvation,  righteous- 
ness, and  hope.  God's  peace  is  an  end,  not  a  beginning. 
The  message  is  not  peace  and  good- will  among  men  ;  it 
is  peace  only  for  men  disciplined  into  God's  ^^dll,  for  men 
of  such  good-will.  So  the  judgment  which  should  do  that 
was  no  mere  day  of  wrath,  no  reign  of  terror,  no  storm 
of  retribution,  no  taking  of  vengeance.  It  was  a  great 
hope.  It  was  looked  forward  to  and  prayed  for  ;  it  was 
promise  more  than  doom.  So  much  so,  indeed,  as  to  be 
in  danger,  in  very  popular  hands,  of  becoming  a  matter 
of  levity,  with  the  day  of  the  Lord  no  more  than  a  Latin 


X.]  SAVING  JUDGMENT  185 

Sunday,  or  der  Tag  of  militarist  savagery.  That  was  one 
reason  why  the  Prophets  had  to  urge  that  it  would  sift 
even  Israel.  And  this  sifting  was  the  beginning  of  that 
breach  in  the  unity  of  the  nation,  and  that  crumbling 
of  its  solidary  destiny,  which  issued  in  the  individualism 
of  its  later  days. 

May  I  quote  from  myself  ?  '  For  the  Bible  as  a 
whole,  whether  rising  to  the  Cross  or  spreading  from  it, 
history  is  viewed  under  the  category  of  judgment  (though 
saving  judgment)  and  not  under  that  of  progress. 
Eschatology  goes  much  deeper  than  evolution.  Only 
think  of  its  moral  nature  rather  than  its  sectorial  form. 
The  eschatologies  are  here  in  the  true  style  of  the  Hebrew 
teleology  of  history.  Its  atmosphere  was  that  of  catas- 
trophe and  crisis  rather  than  development.  It  thought 
of  conversion,  or  regeneration,  or  restitution  rather  than 
of  growth.  The  course  of  historic  events  is  that  of  a 
series  of  judgments,  each  like  an  automatic  release  when 
the  cup  of  iniquity  was  filled.  But  still  it  was  an  ascend- 
ing series,  rising  from  purification  to  redemption,  through 
good  men  to  prophets  and  through  prophets  to  God's 
Son  (Matt.  xxi.  37).  It  was  a  long  crescendo  of  judgment, 
ending  in  a  crisis  of  all  the  crises,  a  harvest  of  all  the 
harvests  which  had  closed  one  age  and  begun  a  new,  a 
grand  climacteric  of  judgment,  a  last  judgment,  which 
dissipates  for  ever  in  a  storm  the  silting  up  of  all  previous 
judgments,  because  ending  a  temporal  world  and  opening 
an  eternal.  This  was  a  time  of  terror,  indeed,  but  far 
more  a  time  of  glory,  since  it  meant  the  dawn  of  the 
kingdom  more  even  than  the  doom  of  the  world.  As 
thought  in  the  subject  grew  more  individualist,  it  travelled 
beyond  the  plane  even  of  history,  and  it  drew  the  dead 
from  Sheol  in  resurrection,  to  have  justice  done  them,  and 
to  see  the  great  justice  done.  So  God  fulfils  and  justifies 
Himself.  The  judgments  of  history,  so  far  from  calling 
for  a  theodicy,  are  parts  of  God's  historic  and  practical 


186  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

theodicy.  And  they  are  so  far  from  needing  an  apologia 
that,  with  such  a  world,  the  difficulty  would  be  to  defend 
God  if  they  were  not  there.' 

This  idea  of  judgment  was  very  current  when  Christ 
came  ;  and  it  coloured  much  of  the  first  Christian  preach- 
ing, through  the  turn  it  took  from  the  expectation  of 
Christ's  speedy  return,  and  through  the  way  in  which 
Apocalyptism  took  the  lead  of  the  old  Prophetism.  The 
new  feature  in  Christianity  was  this — that  the  final  judg- 
ment (whether  as  a  historic,  even  cosmic,  catastrophe, 
or  as  the  close  of  each  individual  life)  was  effected  in  Jesus 
Christ,  and  consummated  by  Him  (John  v.  22).  So  much 
so  that  a  great  deal  of  Christian  thought  was  given  to  the 
question  how  a  future  judgment  of  beUevers  could  com- 
port with  the  facts  of  the  Christian  salvation,  final  and 
secure.  The  ideas  of  responsibility  and  retribution  must 
be  adjusted  to  the  assurance  of  justification.  The  election 
of  Israel  and  its  pardon  did  not  give  it  immimity  from 
judgment.  The  end  of  the  law  in  Christ  did  not  destroy 
the  final  judgment,  but  it  provided  the  final  standard. 
The  idea  of  a  judgment  is  boimd  up  with  a  moral  order 
of  a  very  real,  immanent,  and  urgent,  not  to  say  eternal, 
kind.  Yet  how  does  it  comport  with  grace  ?  Is  the  gracious 
God  judge  at  all  in  His  grace  ?  How  can  Christ  be  at 
once  the  living  embodiment  of  the  moral  law  (and  so  both 
standard  and  judge)  and  also  the  living  grace  of  God 
and  the  agent  of  reconcilement  ?  This  is  the  issue  in 
the  Cross,  and  for  many  it  has  been  its  offence.  And  the 
line  of  answer  is  that  the  grace  is  the  judgment ;  that 
grace,  acting  by  way  of  atonement,  has  in  its  very 
nature  a  moral  element,  which  does  not  leave  the  indif- 
ferent immune,  but  becomes  their  judgments.  Judgment 
is  the  negative  side  of  love's  positive  righteousness. 

In  the  great  and  final  inquest  the  judge  is  Christ  the 
justifier.     And  the  judgment  falls  on  the  Church  and  its 


X.]  SAVING  JUDGMENT  187 

faith,  rather  than  on  the  world  and  its  no  faith.  But 
it  falls  on  the  Church  largely  in  respect  of  that  which 
brings  it  into  living  and  loving  contact  with  the  elemental 
human  need  (Matthew  xxv.  31). ^  The  same  judgment 
is  at  once  universal  and  individual.  And  for  the  indivi- 
dual there  is  no  sound  certainty  of  salvation,  none  beyond 
the  risk  of  illusion,  but  that  which  will  bear  the  test  of  a 
final  judgment  of  moral  finality  (Matthew  vii.  21).  So 
1  Cor.  iv.  4.  We  may  be  judged  at  last  (though  not 
justified)  by  what  may  be  below  our  own  conscious  motive. 
*  When  saw  we  Thee  an  hungered  ?  '  We  are  to  God 
more  than  we  know.  It  is  certainly  not  by  atomic  acts 
we  are  judged,  nor  by  their  balance  tested  by  a  mere  law 
(1  Cor.  iii.  15).  The  ultimate,  the  fundamental,  judg- 
ment is  an  adjustment  between  persons — God's  and  man's. 
It  is  not  between  a  soul  and  a  law.  It  is  a  judgment  of  our 
faith  and  its  personal  relation  to  the  true  Christian,  rather 
than  of  our  works,  which  are  the  fruit  of  the  relation. 
Lip  confession  of  Christ  is  nothing  ;  but  soul  confession, 
life  confession,  there  must  be.  The  great  judgment  is 
not  upon  works,  but   upon  the    standing   life -act  which 

1  With  reference  to  Matthew  xxv.,  it  may  be  observed  (though  not  with- 
out hesitation) : 

1.  It  concerns,  perhaps,  works  of  love  to  poor  and  afflicted  Christians 
rather  than  to  the  poor  of  Humanity.  The  dividing  line  goes  through  the 
Church.  Cf.  Matthew  vii.  21,  'Lord,  Lord.'  The  heathen  make  but  a 
background  of  spectators. 

2.  The  ultimate  value  of  the  service  is  not  its  Humanitarianism,  but  its 
Christianity,  its  being  done  to  Christ — done  not  out  of  humane  pity  but  out 
of  Christian  faith,  however  indirectly — done  not  to  men  but  to  Christians, 
because  Christians  are  the  people  in  Christ's  presence.  The  real  final  saving 
thing  is  the  doer's  relation  to  Christ.  Inhumanity  is  not  surprising  in  the 
natural  man,  but  in  a  Christian  man  or  people  it  is  damnable. 

3.  This  is  not  the  sole  thing  which  determines  judgment.  For  Christ 
praises  other  qualities  and  virtues— as  in  the  Beatitudes — and  promises 
them  blessedness.  Hence  this  must  have  been  'occasional,'  and  must 
refer  to  a  situation  which  demanded  prominence  for  these  philanthropies. 
Christians  were  not  such  because  of  this,  but  this  is  what  showed  if  their 
faith  was  the  true  righteousness,  the  true  relation  to  Christ. 


188  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

practically  and  eternally  disposes  of  the  i)erson.  It  is 
Rome's  error  to  say  that  justification  is  by  law,  and  that 
grace  is  merely  to  supply  us  with  the  power  to  keep  the 
law  after  a  free  pardon  of  original  sin  in  baptism. 
Obedience  to  Christ  is  the  product  of  love  and  personal 
relation  to  Him  (John  xiv.  15  ;  1  John  iv.  17,  v.  3). 

There  is  then  a  goal  of  history  and  a  theodicy  in  the  grand 
style  ;  and  it  is  a  last  judgment  (whatever  form  it  take) 
according  to  God's  grace.  God  vindicates  Himself  by  a 
righteous  grace.  His  answer  to  human  sin  was — Christ 
as  crucified.  The  grace  of  God  is  the  greatest  judgment 
ever  passed  on  the  world.  That  is  the  nature  of  the 
Cross — God's  grace  (and  not  God's  law),  in  moral,  saving 
judgment  on  man.  When  we  have  entered  the  kingdom 
through  the  great  judgment  in  the  Cross,  we  do  not 
escape  all  judgment ;  we  escape  into  a  new  kind  of  judg- 
ment, from  that  of  law  to  that  of  grace.  We  escape  con- 
demnation, for  we  are  new  creatures,  but  chastisement 
we  do  not  escape.  Our  work  may  be  burned,  to  our  grief, 
that  we  may  be  saved  (1  Cor.  xi.  32).  We  are  judged 
or  chastened  with  the  Church  to  escape  condemnation 
with  the  world.  And  at  the  last  must  there  not  be  some 
great  crisis  of  self-judgment,  when  we  all  see  Him  as  He 
is,  and  see  ourselves  as  His  grace  sees  us  ? 

The  modern  interest  in  judgment  is  not  in  a  last  judg- 
ment that  ends  history.  That  may  be  too  far  off  to  be 
effective,  and  the  damages  too  remote.  But  we  are  con- 
cerned about  the  action  of  the  judgment  principle  in  history 
and  the  soul.  We  are  concerned  in  an  inmost  and  in- 
eluctable judgment  active  in  experience ;  in  an  ultimate 
and  absolute  judgment  which,  rising  from  the  last  centre 
to  the  surface,  slowly  and  subtl}^  pervades  and  controls  it; 
a  moral  purpose  taking  historic  effect  in  affairs  in  its  un- 
hurried but  inevitable  way.  This  is  what  might  be  called 
the  intra-worldly  action  of  Christ's  Cross,  and  it  is  one 
which  the  Church  has  too  much  neglected.     It  is  to  many 


X.J  SAVING  JUDGMENT  189 

an  incredible,  and  even  unintelligible,  thing  to  say  that 
the  last  judgment  took  place  in  principle  in  that  Cross 
as  God's  last  word  and  Self-vindication  to  the  world,  that 
we  are  living  in  the  midst  of  it,  and  that  all  history  is 
working  it  into  detail,  whether  by  way  of  order  or  of 
convulsion.  Nor  are  they  less  be^vildered  when  they  are 
told  that  the  thing  which  took  place  on  that  Cross  was  a 
tragedy  and  a  crisis  infinitely  greater  than  if  Germany 
plunged  every  State  into  war,  if  America  were  submerged 
in  the  ocean,  or  Britain  cast  into  the  depths  of  the  sea  ; 
that  it  was  a  tragedy  in  which  the  holy  heart  of  the 
loving  God  was  more  concerned  than  in  the  collapse  of  a 
whole  civilisation.  The  Cross  was  a  more  momentous 
thing  for  God  and  history  than  the  debacle  of  the  Hittite, 
Babylonian,  or  Roman  Empire.  For  He  has  seen  them 
rise  and  set,  but  still  the  Cross  leads  His  kingdom  on. 
That  Cross  is  not  only  very  real  but  fontal,  creative  and  final 
for  the  Kingdom  of  God  to  which  all  history  moves.  The 
act  of  saving  judgment  there,  in  the  Cross,  is  not  simply 
the  historic  summit  of  the  moral  order  but  the  constant 
spiritual  source  of  it.  The  Cross  enacts  on  an  eternal 
scale  the  moral  principle  which  is  subduing  all  history  at 
last  to  itself  and  its  holy  love.  The  judgment  process  in 
history  only  unfolds  the  finality  of  the  eternal  judgment 
act  which  is  in  the  Cross,  to  recondense  it  in  the  final 
settlement  of  all  things.  The  kingdom  of  the  world  and 
the  adventures  of  men  are  all  under  law  to  this  Christ 
crucified  and  risen.  Not  one  of  them  escapes  from  His 
leash,  however  long  it  may  seem.  That  is  the  New  Testa- 
ment faith.  And  so  long  as  Christianity  remains  our 
creed,  so  long  wdll  the  Biblical  idea  remain  which  treats 
history  as  the  prize  of  the  Cross,  the  field  of  its  ethic,  the 
area  of  God's  judgments,  the  constant  upcasting  to  the 
top  of  the  last  judgment  at  the  core  ;  or,  reversing  this 
image,  the  penetration  and  settlement  of  His  kingdom 
into  the  heart  of  affairs.     For  the  Cross  of  Christ  is  not 


190  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

only  set  up  in  history,  it  takes  root  in  it.  Its  very  radicles 
split  the  rocks  of  time,  so  that  they  crumble  into  soil  which 
feeds  it.  It  is  integrated  into  history,  and  weaves  all 
historic  vicissitudes  into  the  judgment  unto  salvation. 
We  are  doomed  to  the  greatness  of  Christ,  and  not  merely 
wooed.  The  central  interest  of  the  world  is  its  moral 
crisis.  It  is  the  crisis  of  its  sin.  And  that  is  the  eternal 
crisis  of  the  Cross,  the  acme  of  the  war  in  heaven.  The 
Cross  of  Christ  is  God's  last  judgment  on  all  sin,  for  its 
destruction  by  a  realm  of  infinite  grace  and  love.  It  is 
the  last  resource  of  the  Almighty  Holiness  ;  and  His  last 
resource  is  the  end  of  all  things — which  is  now  always  at 
hand  in  a  kingdom  both  coming  and  come.  Only  if 
God's  saving  love  fail  the  world  can  judgment  fail  from 
the  earth,  only  if  He  abandon  it  with  His  personal 
presence,  and  if  His  Self-revelation  cease  to  be  His 
historic  Self-donation  and  Self-justification  to  the  world. 
For  God  is  not  the  Custodian  of  a  moral  order  independent 
of  Him,  whose  establishment  is  His  mission  in  life.  But 
He  is  His  o"v\ti  kingdom,  if  we  may  put  it  so.  And  in  His 
holiness  we  live,  and  move,  and  have  our  moral  being  at 
our  last  and  best. 

Hence  the  judgment  on  mankind  is  not  so  much  a  matter 
of  ripening  stages  of  moral  progress  (though  these  have 
their  place),  but  it  is  rather  the  standing  dilemma  of  the 
soul,  single  or  social,  its  constant  '  either — or,'  for  a  holy 
God  or  no  God  in  affairs,  for  God  or  for  His  enemies. 
Actually  the  fine  is  not  sharp,  but  really  it  is.  Morally 
it  is  not,  religiously  it  is.  It  is  like  the  equator.  We 
cannot  trace  it  on  the  earth,  but  we  cannot  work  without 
it.  In  the  last  resort  judgment  is  not  the  realisation  by 
stages  of  an  idea,  but  a  relation,  an  action,  and  a  business 
between  person  and  person,  for  or  against.  It  is  a  matter 
of  holy  love,  the  gracious  love  of  the  Cross,  taken  as  the 
constitutive  principle  of  the  world  and  the  subduing, 
shaping  principle  of  its  history. 


X.]  SAVING  JUDGMENT  191 

Yet,  though  it  is  not  wholly  untrue  to  say  that  die 
Wdtgeschichte  ist  das  Weltgericht  it  is  not  wholly  true. 
It  certainly  needs  to  be  supplemented.  I  hope  to  do  this 
in  my  next  chapter,  but  I  will  touch  it  now. 

It  is  not  the  course,  nor  even  the  progress,  of  the  world 
that  is  its  judgment,  but  its  invasion  by  Eternity,  which, 
as  holy,  has  in  a  Person  the  standard  and  the  power  of 
eternal  moral  value.  The  world's  judgment  is  at  a  vital 
point  and  crisis  of  history,  where  God  comes  to  stay  and 
to  work  onward,  where  the  eternal  standard  is  set  up  fo^* 
ever  in  the  only  form  appropriate  to  the  holy — in  a  living, 
loving,  holy  person  in  power.  It  is  in  Christ ;  and  it  is 
in  that  in  Christ  for  which  He  was  most  concerned — 
the  moral  crisis,  the  holy  judgment,  and  gracious  salva- 
tion of  all  history  by  His  Cross.  All  in  Him  gathered 
to  the  Passion ;  and  in  the  Passion  all  gathered  there,  in 
judgment  unto  salvation.  The  key  is  not  in  process,  and 
not  in  ideals,  nor  in  their  evolution,  but  in  crisis,  in 
an  intervention,  an  invasion,  a  miracle  of  fundamental 
and  final  and  holy  grace,  which  from  the  first  underlay 
all,  but  had  to  break  through  all.  The  reconciliation  of 
the  world  with  God,  the  judgment  of  its  conscience  (which 
is  its  painful  adjustment)  by  His  holy  love,  is  effected  in 
the  central  act  of  the  Cross ;  the  act  of  a  judgment 
which  meant  not  only  effect  given  to  God's  holy  love, 
but  also  separation  made  between  those  who  chose  it 
and  those  who  did  not.  And  of  this  real,  ultimate,  moral 
judgment,  the  holy  God's  last  word  in  the  way  of  His 
estimate  and  treatment  of  the  world,  the  last  judgment 
so  called,  is  but  the  consummation  in  actual  detail.  It 
sets  forth  a  judgment  already  in  principle  effected  and  put 
in  conquering  action  among  the  forces  of  history  by  the 
ever-sifting  Gospel  and  the  touchstone  of  grace.  What 
is  judgment  but  the  setting  out  in  true  and  full  light 
{i.e.  in  just  relation  to  the  whole)  of  the  actual  state  of 
things  between  the  soul's  case  and  the  ruHng  power  of  the 


192  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [CH. 

world  ?  Unless  Christ  be  a  dream  or  a  dreamer,  that 
power  is  God's  grace.  That  is  our  final  judge.  To  it 
we  stand  or  fall.  The  gospel  of  grace,  in  the  Cross  and 
its  preaching,  is  the  real  ultimate  judgment  of  the  world, 
the  real  and  final  power  at  work  now.  When  the  world 
is  brought  to  book,  the  book  is  neither  a  celestial  code  nor  a 
log  kept  by  recording  angels.  It  is  the  Bible  as  the  shrine 
of  the  Gospel.  Its  Cross  is  the  historic  bench,  as  it  were, 
on  which  Christ  sits  as  Judge  and  Saviour.  There  is  no 
appeal  from  that  Court  and  that  verdict.  We  must  all 
stand  (and  all  means  at  last)  before  the  judgment- seat  of 
Christ  crucified.  The  one  moral  crisis  of  the  world  is 
there — unless  we  strip  from  the  Cross  the  notion  of  either 
world  judgment  or  atonement,  and  make  it  but  a  piece 
of  aesthetic  sacrifice,  or  moving  appeal,  or  ingenious  re- 
trieval in  a  backwater  of  history.  The  curse  of  orthodoxy, 
and  of  the  current  religion  it  has  coloured,  has  been  to 
sever  the  Cross  from  the  whole  moral  fabric  and  move- 
ment of  the  universe  and  make  it  a  theologian's  affair. 
To  the  Cross  conscience  stands  or  falls  to  the  Cross  as  the 
moral  crisis  of  souls,  of  nations,  of  the  universe,  and  of 
Eternity.  The  belief  in  a  last  judgment  is  much  more  than 
good  for  the  soul  ;  a  last,  a  fundamental,  judgment  is  the 
very  genius  both  of  God's  dominion  and  of  the  salvation 
in  love  of  all  souls.  A  final  judgment  on  the  soul  is  one 
also  on  the  world.  Death  only  removes  us  from  earthly 
conditions,  not  from  this  Christ — rather  from  the  distance 
between  us  and  Him  ;  and  it  is  only  when  all  the  world 
stands  before  Christ,  only  as  we  have  such  a  Christ  as 
draws  the  world  by  its  conscience  to  His  bar,  that  each 
man  is  finally  judged  to  his  saved  place. 

Without  the  judgment  and  destiny  effected  in  the 
Cross  of  Christ  we  can  have  no  teleology  of  history.  Thig 
is  a  thing  that  a  philosophy  of  history  cannot  give.  It 
cannot  deal  with  the  evil  that  is  in  the  world.     It  cannot 


X.]  SAVING  JUDGMENT  193 

assure  us  that  the  holy  will  win  the  day  at  last.  We  do 
not  receive  the  end  in  advance,  as  Christian  faith  does. 
We  may  be  more  or  less  able  to  cherish  a  general  optimism, 
but  we  do  not  really  discover  a  moral  teleology  in  things, 
because  we  do  not  discover  the  telos,  sure,  subtle,  ubiqui- 
tous, and  almighty.  We  do  not  have  a  Christ  who  is 
the  end  in  the  beginning.  We  are  not  presented  with  a 
starting  point  for  our  faith,  with  God's  own  principle  of  a 
final  judgment.  We  search  the  heavens  of  the  past  with- 
out a  pole  or  a  sun,  and  we  see  but  fanciful  constellations 
of  history  instead  of  divine  orbits  and  systems.  The 
very  last  judgment  on  things,  we  think,  is  yet  to  come,  it 
is  not  come  already.  And  we  are  not  j^et  told  its  prin- 
ciple. God  has  not  said  His  last  word  with  the  world. 
We  can  never  be  sure,  for  instance,  that  in  a  great  war  the 
issue  will  go  to  the  side  that  has  most  justice,  or  that  most 
makes  for  the  kingdom  of  God.  It  might  go  to  military 
efficiency,  to  the  side  that  has  the  best  machine  and  the 
least  scruple.  And,  failing  such  assurance,  we  have  no 
point  of  revelation  which  gives  us  in  one  act  the  ground 
of  to-day  and  the  goal  of  to-morrow,  which  presents  us 
in  advance  with  the  purpose  and  destiny  of  the  world,  and 
which  enables  us,  by  a  holy  spirit  breaking  free  from  the 
coteries,  to  divine  the  object  of  all  history  working  up 
through  it.  We  are  afraid  that  if  we  find  that  moral 
ground  and  destiny  of  the  world  in  the  historic  Christ  and 
His  Cross,  and  if  we  say  '  we  see  not  yet  all  things  put 
under  righteousness,  but  we  see  Jesus,'  and  rest,  we  shall  be 
called  Biblicists  instead  of  historians,  more  theological 
than  ethical.  Well,  we  must  take  the  risk.  The  judg- 
ment of  the  world  accordingly  is  not  the  history  of  the 
world,  but  its  Saviour.  There  is  judgment  in  history, 
but  the  verdict  of  history  is  not  the  whole  of  judgment. 
At  any  stage  it  is  but  partial,  and  success  is  not  settlement. 
It  all  runs  out  and  runs  up  into  a  last  judgment,  and  the 
reconstitution  of  all  things      God  judges  the  world  as  He 


194  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

brings  all  men  to  their  last  stand  and  hope — before  Christ 
the  first  and  the  last.  He  judges  the  world  as  He  comes 
in  Christ  to  all  men.  The  judgment  of  the  world  has 
therefore  much  to  do,  and  closely,  with  missions  to  the 
world.  Christian  universalism  turns  on  a  belief,  not  in 
the  unity  of  Humanity  (which  we  cannot  be  sure  of), 
but  in  the  one  final  Goal  and  Judge  and  Saviour  and  King 
of  all  men.  It  is  by  the  conscience  that  mankind  is  one 
by  its  witness  of  the  one  power  over  it ;  and  Christ 
gathers  up  the  conscience  of  the  race,  and,  in  His  own 
Soul,  sets  it  in  the  active  light  of  the  conscience  of  God. 
To  a  holy  God  the  salvation  of  the  world's  evil  soul  is  a 
matter  of  conscience. 

We  are  all  standing  before  the  judgment-seat  of  Christ. 
And  one  day  we  shall  know  it.  We  end  where  we  began 
• — in  Him.  All  things  are  set  at  last  in  that  light.  His 
love — our  great  boon  or  else  our  great  doom — is  the  deep 
and  crjrptic  formula  of  the  movement  of  Time.  Time  is 
great  with  that  Eternity.  But  its  process  is  no  mere 
metamorphosis  of  Humanity  by  the  progress  of  humane 
civilisation,  philanthropy,  and  social  reform — inevitable 
as  it  makes  such  things  to  be.  Love  is  not  simply  the  great 
propelling  and  enriching  principle  ;  it  is  the  great  dis- 
criminating, consuming,  selective,  reconstitutive  principle. 
Its  holiness  is  the  principle  of  sifting,  and  creative 
and  redemptive  judgment.  The  consummation  does  not 
arrive  with  the  gradual  leavening  and  organisation  of 
Humanity  by  the  law  of  sympathetic  love.  It  is  more 
creative  than  that,  and  more  of  a  gift  from  above,  more 
of  a  holy  justification.  It  goes  back  at  every  point  for  its 
source  and  power  to  the  decisive,  finished,  ultimate,  and 
eternal  act  of  the  God  of  holy  love  in  His  Cross.  It 
comes  as  this  ceaseless  Act  works  up  through  all  things 
in  a  creative  evolution  to  their  control,  taking  effect, 
taking  selective,  rejecting,  condemning,  saving  effect  in 
history,  and  guiding  or  forcing  every  soul  upon  its  moral 


X.]  SAVING  JUDGMENT  195 

relation  to  the  redemption  of  Eternity  far  more  than  to 
the  ameliorations  of  Time.  The  Christian  word  of  the 
Cross  is  not  that  God  is  love,  but  that  God's  love  as 
holy  is  the  omnipotence  of  the  world  with  the  final 
reversion  of  all  things. 

So  the  justification  of  God  is  not  given  us  by  Christ ; 
it  is  Christ ;  who  under  the  judgment  from  man  took  His 
native  place  as  the  judge  of  all  the  earth,  justifying  the 
God  of  holy  love  in  His  justification  of  all  the  world. 


196  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 


CHAPTER  XI 

HISTORY   AND  JUDGMENT 

I 
Scriptural 

It  has  always  been  the  bane  of  theology  when  it  has  been 
isolated  from  the  course  of  public  affairs,  and  left  neutral 
to  the  issues  of  history — when  it  has  been  other-worldly. 
This  brought  Lutheranism  to  the  sterile  orthodoxy  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  and  has  now  reduced  it  to  a 
Hving  death  in  its  Byzantinism  in  the  twentieth  ;  while  the 
opposite  course,  a  practical  and  inner- worldly  interest  in 
the  kingdom  of  God,  has  made  Calvinism  the  religious 
creator  of  the  free  and  humane  West.  The  severance  has 
also  affected  American  rehgion,  to  say  nothing  of  British. 
Doctrine  and  politics  are  far  from  neutral,  when  our  scale 
of  survey  is  dulj^  wide. 

But  there  are  junctures  in  history  which  much  affect  the 
perspective  of  belief,  and  draw  into  light  certain  doctrines 
rather  than  others.  In  the  days  of  rampant  individualism 
it  was  necessary  to  emphasise  the  love  of  God  to  supply 
the  sympathetic  and  binding  note.  But  now,  when  the 
unit  is  taken  in  hand  by  such  a  machinery  of  social  organi- 
sation and  efficiency  as  the  world  has  never  seen,  and  when 
the  love  of  God  has  fallen  to  mean  but  natural  affection 
magnified,  the  faith  of  a  spiritual  and  holy  power  is  carried 
home  by  judgment.  Such  efficiency,  being  on  a  scale  no 
larger  than  national  egoism,  has  issued  in  militarism  and 


XI.]  HISTORY  AND  JUDGMENT  197 

war — cynic,  ethic,  and  ruthless  war ;  and  so  God  takes 
His  own  text,  and  preaches,  to  those  that  have  ears  to 
hear,  judgment.  His  great  sermons  on  crucial  occasions 
are  long,  and  deeply  theological.  Perhaps  now  we  may 
grow  in  the  mood  to  listen,  and  the  skill  to  read  His  signs 
in  the  times.  What  is  the  Christian  theology  of  public 
judgment  ?  It  is  not  great  nations  only,  but  modern 
civilisation  that  is  at  the  bar.  Does  it  stand  before  the 
judgment-seat  of  Christ  ? 

In  the  Bible,  in  Christianity,  the  idea  of  judgment  is 
not  that  of  a  remote  and  unearthly  dies  irce — a  notion 
which  has  become  a  demoralising  dream,  withdrawing 
religion  from  the  midst  of  life.  Judgment  is  the  visitation 
of  a  Saviour.  It  comes  into  affairs.  It  means  less  de- 
struction than  reconstitution.  It  has  a  note  of  joy  in  it, 
the  joy  of  harvest.  (Cp.  Psalm  xcvi.)  It  is  associated 
with  salvation,  public  righteousness,  and  endless  hope. 
A  salvation  without  judgment  is  not  thought  of,  nor  a 
judgment  without  salvation.  It  is  a  function  of  the  Great 
King,  and  the  obverse  of  the  Great  Kingdom. 

For  the  Bible  as  a  whole,  historj^  rising  to  the  Cross  and 
sx)reading  from  it,  is  viewed  under  this  category  of  saving 
judgment,  and  not  that  of  civilised  progress.  The  atmo- 
sphere is  one  of  dilemma,  choice,  and  crisis  rather  than 
development.  The  thought  is  that  of  a  destiny  reached 
by  conversion,  regeneration,  or  restitution,  rather  than 
growth.  Evil  comes  to  a  head,  sin  is  precipitated  into 
transgression  (Rom.  vii.),  that  it  may  be  dealt  with  cen- 
trally, and  with  more  or  less  finality.  But  yet  this  scrip- 
tural idea  of  judgment  and  crisis  is  not  quite  incompatible 
with  more  modern  views  of  history.  As  room  has  been  found 
for  both  creation  and  develoioment  in  Bergson's  Creative 
Evolution,  so  we  may  adjust  the  old  truth  and  the' new  in 
respect  of  judgment.  We  recognise  an  evolution  of  crises. 
The  last  judgment  is  the  last  of  a  long  train,  and  the  series 
is  an  ascending  series  (Matt.  xxi.  37).     It  is  a  crescendo 


198  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

of  judgment,  ending  in  a  crisis  of  all  the  crises,  a  harvest 
of  all  the  harvests  which  had  gathered  up  one  age  and 
begun  a  new,  a  grand  climacteric  of  judgment,  closing  one 
world,  opening  another,  and  dissipating  for  ever  in  a  storm 
the  silting  up  of  all  previous  junctures.  But  it  always 
means  the  dawn  of  the  kingdom  more  than  the  doom 
of  the  world.  And  as  thought  grew  more  individualist 
it  travelled  outside  visible  history,  and  drew  the  dead 
from  Sheol  in  resurrection,  to  have  justice  done  them 
and  to  see  justice  done. 

This  notion  of  judgment  was  very  current  when  Christ 
came  ;  and  it  coloured  much  Christian  preaching  through 
the  expectation  of  Christ's  speedy  return.  The  new  feature 
in  Christianity  was  this — that  the  final  judgment  was 
closely  associated,  and  even  identified,  with  the  work  of 
the  historic  Christ.  It  was  in  principle  effected  in  Jesus 
Christ,  and  consummated  by  Him.  He  died  as  King. 
His  work  of  the  Cross  was  the  world's  judgment  imto  its 
salvation.  It  was  God's  final  treatment  of  the  world. 
We  shall  face  it  at  the  end  ;  but  only  because  now  we  face 
it  at  bottom.  The  '  last  judgment '  is  but  a  time  expres- 
sion of  this  ultimate  judgment,  now  inherent,  perpetual, 
and  fundamental.  Ever  since,  human  history  has  been 
living  in  this  final  judgment,  and  living  it  out.  Nothing 
in  history  or  the  sonl  comes  to  its  true  end  without  finding 
its  judgment  in  Christ.  '  To  live  is  Christ.'  And  the 
great  judgment  is  His  grace. 


n 

Evangelical 

It  is  the  mark  of  the  Dark  Ages  and  the  Church's  mil- 
lennial slumber  that  theology  departed  from  its  historic 
base  and  lost  the  sense  of  history  in  the  wilds  of  specula- 
tion.   This  base  and  this  sense  we  are  onlj^  now  recovering 


XI.]  HISTORY  AND  JUDGjVIENT  199 

for  faith.  The  first  Christian  principle  was  right,  what- 
ever we  think  of  its  first  form.  High  history  is  not  pos- 
sible without  the  teleology  which  a  final  judgment  supplies 
for  all  other  crises.  And  Christianity  alone,  by  this  article 
of  faith,  makes  a  history  of  the  world  possible.  It  restores 
theology  to  history,  and  history  to  theology.  But  it  must 
be  a  much  more  deep,  realist,  and  urgent  theology  than 
has  been  current  in  the  popular  religion,  now  so  rudely 
shattered. 

The  principle  of  a  final  judgment  means  an  incessant 
and  fundamental  judgment,  and  not  merely  a  terminal ; 
it  is  immanent  and  not  remote.  It  is  a  finality  working 
in  history,  not  after  it.  And  the  course  of  history  is  such, 
especially  present  history,  that  without  a  revelation  of 
the  kind  it  would  be  impossible  to  believe  in  a  moral 
control  of  the  large  career  of  events.  Such  a  revelation 
gives  us  the  divine  movement,  measure,  and  destiny  of 
the  world  ;  and  it  declares  this  moral  nisus  (whose  climac- 
teric is  the  Cross)  to  be  working,  dominant  however  latent, 
in  all  things  that  are  done.  Christ  died  as  King  of  the 
world.  He  is  the  perpetual  chief  ot  the  Great  Powers, 
whose  true  balance  is  His  control.  This  view  fertilises 
all  our  recent  progress  in  anthropology  and  history,  because 
it  gives  such  things  their  true  reference  to  Eternity,  and 
their  organic  continuity  with  it  at  every  point,  however 
deeply  the  connecting  Unes  are  laid  out  of  sight.  But 
it  implies  a  Christ  whose  royal  action,  and  especially  whose  l 
reconcihation,  was,  above  all  things  moral,  moral  more 
than  afiectional,^  moral  with  the  mystic  ethic  of  Eternity. 
This  moral  action,  re-creating  the  race  in  the  heart  of  its 
affairs,  has  its  focal  point  in  the  holy  Cross,  i.e.  in  a  Cross 
ruled  by  the  eternal,  ethical  conditions  of  holy  love,  and 
of  salvation  by  its  judgment.  If  Time  is  related  at  every 
point  to  a  holy  Eternity,  to  the  kingdom  of  a  holy  God 

1  'Be  ye  reconciled— ior  He  hath  made  Him  to  be  sin  for  us  who  knew 
no  sin  that  we  might  be  made  the  righteousness  of  God  in  Him.' 


200  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

and  not  a  mere  national  Deity,  it  must  be  related  in  a  way 
of  final  judgment,  of  moral  crisis  and  settlement,  and  not 
of  endless  evolution  or  transfiguration.  For  holiness  is 
action,  and  not  mere  process.  Such  was  the  Cross  of 
Christ.  The  judgment  principle,  searching,  sifting,  part- 
ing to  right  and  left,  to  life  and  death,  settling  all  things, 
slowly  setting  up  an  eternal  kingdom,  and  not  merely 
moving  onwards  like  a  civilisation,  was  within  all  that 
Christ  was,  and  at  last  did.^  The  mode  of  salvation  was 
judgment,  since  it  was  atonement.  We  still  find  that 
an  indifference  as  to  any  final  judgment  is  common  where 
the  Cross  is  softened  to  exclude  the  idea  of  atoning  judg- 
ment. And  the  apathy  works  out  into  a  disbelief  of 
judgment  radical  and  ubiquitous,  into  a  light  sense  of 
spiritual  wickedness  in  high  places,  and  into  the  moral 
c}Tiicism  and  cruelty  of  the  natural  man  as  statesman  or 
man  of  the  world.  That  indifference  is  the  symptom  of 
a  state  of  things  in  which  the  Cross  loses  its  searching 
and  universal,  its  ethical  and  public  quality,  and  comes 
to  be  admired  as  heroic  sacrifice,  or  sweetened  to  the  taste 
of  the  piety  of  religious  groups. 

There  is  no  side  of  theology  (we  have  seen)  on  which 
the  age  is  so  exercised  and  so  bewildered  as  in  the  matter 
of  a  theodicy — a  vindication  of  the  ways  of  God  among 
men,  especially  on  a  large  and  public  scale.  That  need 
was  perhaps  never  felt  as  it  is  in  this  dreadful  day.  But 
(we  have  also  seen)  -without  the  revelation  of  a  final 
judgment,  a  judgment  final  both  in  future  time  and 
present  principle,  no  theodicy  is  possible.  Where  shall 
we  find  that  revelation  ?  It  cannot  be  traced  in  affairs 
but  only  trusted  in  Christ.  We  cannot  discover  a  God 
of  holy  love  in  the  career  of  history  so  far  as  gone,  nor 
in  the  principles  of  a  rational  idealism  ;  we  can  but 
meet  Him  at  the  point  where  it  pleased  Him  to  appear  as 
Saviour,  and  greet  Him  at  the  historic  spot  He  chose,  to 

1  Every  Beatitude  was  balanced  by  a  Woe,  as  in  Luke's  version. 


xi.J  HISTORY  AND  JUDGMENT  201 

set  for  ever  His  name  and  nature  there.  Our  belief  in 
God,  historic  as  it  is,  is  a  belief  in  spite  of  history.  Those 
who  draw  their  belief  from  God's  treatment  of  them  or 
their  time  must  collapse  in  the  black  hour.  It  is  not 
wonderful  if,  in  the  present  awful  juncture,  a  belief  which 
grew  up  but  in  fine  weather  should  go  to  pieces  on  moral 
grounds.  It  is  the  Cross  amid  history  that  saves  us  from 
history — by  enacting  God's  last  judgment  in  history, 
and  providing  the  moral  key  to  its  otherwise  impenetrable 
cipher.  The  practical  abeyance,  for  the  age's  religion, 
of  faith  in  a  final  judgment  (whether  fundamental  or 
terminal)  concurs  with  the  loss  of  a  ruling  faith  in  God's 
judging  action  in  the  long  orbits  of  public  affairs.  Along 
with  a  faith  in  the  Great  Inquest,  the  faith  in  the  reign  of 
righteousness  subsides,  sinking  to  patriotism  as  religion, 
and  to  the  belief  in  world-mastery  by  brute  force  in  scien- 
tific hands.  With  the  faith  in  a  moral  consummation 
at  last,  effected  by  a  holy  God  rather  than  developed  by 
man's  conscience,  there  sinks  the  faith  in  a  moral  order 
immanent  now,  with  any  native  right,  intrinsic  promise, 
or  eternal  value  ;  and  we  become  the  victims  of  a  moral 
relativism  with  no  absolute  principle,  with  no  rock  of 
ages,  but  only  a  spirit  of  the  age. 

It  is  a  common  but  vain  inquiry  whether  the  balance  in 
the  world  at  any  given  time  is  for  good  or  evil,  whether 
the  amount  of  actual  good  in  any  age  or  stage  exceeds 
the  amount  of  evil  in  it.  We  cannot  tell — the  quantita- 
tive scale  being  here  out  of  place — nor  would  it  profit 
much  to  know.  What  we  must  know  is,  which  is  destined 
to  conquer,  which  is  on  its  way  to  conquer,  however  un- 
marked, which  has  the  reversion  of  the  world,  and  has  it 
on  the  guarantee  of  the  Ruler  of  a  world  overcome  already. 
Does  the  mastery  by  civilisation  of  the  sensible  world 
(which  we  can  trace)  connote  and  ensure  also  our  mastery 
of  the  moral  ?  Is  efficiency  the  warrant  of  salvation  ? 
The   most  favourable   answers   of   the   best   thinkers   on 


202  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OP  GOD  [ch. 

such  questions  do  not  go  beyond  probabilities — which 
events  like  those  now  round  us  reduce  for  some  minds  to 
vanishing  point.  So  that  pessimism,  with  final  debacle, 
is  erected  into  a  creed,  upon  the  debris  of  the  creeds  of 
hope.  So  ends  a  religion  of  probabilities.  For  faith 
we  must  have  facts,  and  facts  eternal  and  sure.  We  must 
have  a  fact  which  ensures  all  the  future  because  it  con- 
tains it,  creates  it,  and  gives  us  the  final  settlement  of  the 
moral  soul  in  advance.  For  Christian  faith  (be  it  right  or 
wrong)  that  fact  is  Christ's  Cross,  as  a  greater  fact  than 
all  history,  for  which  now  all  history  moves.  He  is  the 
last  judgment,  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for  ever,  the  goal 
and  justification  of  all  the  devious,  dreadful  ways  of  earth. 
The  deepest  thing,  whether  in  progress  or  catastrophe,  is 
its  contribution  to  His  denouement.  Christ  in  His  Cross 
is  the  theodicy  of  history,  its  crisis,  its  essential,  and  final, 
and  glorious  justice.  Things  are  so  profoundly  out  of 
joint  that  only  something  deeper  than  the  wrecked  world 
can  mend  them,  only  a  God  of  love  and  power  infinite, 
making  his  sovereignty  good  once  for  all,  though  moun- 
tains are  cast  into  the  sea.  The  only  theodicy  is  not 
a  sj^stem,  but  a  salvation ;  it  is  God's  own  saving  Act 
and  final  judgment,  incarnate  historically  and  personally. 
The  Cross  of  Christ,  eternal  and  universal,  immutable 
and  invincible,  is  the  moral  goal  and  principle  of  nations 
and  affairs.  H  it  seem  ridiculous  to  say  that  a  riot  and 
devilry  of  wickedness  like  the  present  war  is  still  not  out 
of  the  providence  of  Christ's  holy  love,  it  is  because  we 
are  victims  of  a  prior  unfaith.  It  is  because  we  have 
come  to  think  it  a  theological  absurdity  to  say  that  the 
Cross  of  Christ  outweighs  for  God  in  awful  tragedy,  historic 
moment,  and  eternal  effect  a  whole  world  ranged  in  in- 
human arms.  We  do  not  really  believe  that  it  is  Christ, 
'  crucified  to  the  end  of  the  world'  (as  Pascal  says),  that 
pays  the  last  cost  for  all  parties  of  this  war.  That  God 
spared  not  His  own  Son  is  a  greater  shock  to  the  natural 


XI.]  HISTORY  AND  JUDGMENT  203 

conscience  than  the  collapse  of  civilisation  in  blood  would 
be.  For  civilisation  may  deserve  to  collapse,  if  only  because 
it  crucified  the  Son  of  God,  and  crucifies  Him  afresh. 
But  if  God  spared  not  His  0T\'n  Son,  He  will  spare  no 
historic  convulsion  needful  for  His  kingdom.  And  if 
the  unspared  Son  neither  complained  nor  challenged, 
but  praised  and  hallowed  the  Father's  name,  we  may 
worship  and  bow  the  head. 


in 

Philosophical 

The  Church,  with  a  last  judgment  remote,  and  an 
individualist  salvation  by  private  bargain  at  hand,  has 
much  failed  in  relating  the  Cross  to  history.  And  in  so 
far  it  has  been  untrue  to  its  Bible. 

Apocalyptic,  which  started  in  prophecy,  regains  the 
ethical  note  in  the  apostles.  It  has  been  abundantly 
shown  by  scholars  that  even  in  the  New  Testament  itself 
the  process  of  thought  had  begun  in  which  the  eschato- 
logical  is  converted  into  the  ethical,  and  the  real  action 
of  judgment  withdrawn  from  a  future  convulsion  to  be 
pressed  into  the  moral  present.  But  this  morahsing  of 
history  was  soon  lost,  and  lost  long.  And  one  of  the 
services  of  the  Illumination  was  to  recover  it  in  a  measure. 
This  recuperative  tendency  has  grown;  and  during  the 
last  century  it  went  so  far  that  the  balance  has  been  lost 
in  the  other  direction,  and  belief  in  a  great  final  judgment, 
or  of  a  second  coming  of  Christ,  to  wind  up  history,  has 
been  relegated  to  certain  obscurantist  sections  of  the 
Church  which  still  cherish  chiliastic  dreams.  Christ,  it  is 
said,  is  returning  here  and  now,  in  the  fruitions  or  nemeses 
of  history.  This  is  a  valuable  creed  ;  but  as  it  is  preached 
it  is  part  of  a  general  tendency  to  substitute  historic  pro- 
cess for  divine  purpose  and  action.    And  the  result  has 


204  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

been  in  many  cases  to  destroy  the  idea  of  judgment 
altogether,  here  or  hereafter — as  has  happened  through 
the  practical  loss  of  the  idea  of  an  endless  hell,  or  indeed 
of  any.  Or,  at  best,  the  result  has  been  to  substitute  for 
God's  judgment  the  self-assertion  of  a  mere  moral  order, 
and  that  chiefly  in  the  more  negative  and  retributory  way. 

But  the  chief  lack  is  not  the  absence  of  that  positive 
and  constructive  element  in  judgment  which  makes  it 
the  growing  pains  of  the  kingdom  as  it  comes ;  it  is  the 
absence,  not  so  much  of  the  idea  of  present  judgment, 
but  of  its  finality  in  a  kingdom  come.  By  which  I  mean 
this. 

No  doubt  it  is  much  gained  to  be  clear  that  judgment 
is  not  deferred  to  a  time  so  distant  that  its  practical  in- 
fluence cannot  cross  the  intervening  gulf.  It  is  well  that 
the  idea  should  be  destroyed  which  makes  damages  so 
remote  that  the  vigorous  and  scientific  sinner  can  go  on 
to  sin  with  defiant  impunity  and  confidence.  It  is  well 
that  we  should  know  that,  as  men  or  nations,  we  are  daily 
registering  our  own  judgment  in  the  character  our  conduct 
is  laying  down,  that  we  are  creating  our  own  Kharma, 
that  we  are  writing  two  copies  of  our  life  at  once — one 
of  them,  through  the  black  carbon  of  time  and  death, 
in  the  eternal.  And  it  elevates  the  whole  conception  of 
history  to  view  it  as  at  bottom  the  action,  almost  auto- 
matic, and  therefore  certain,  of  the  divine  judgment — 
so  long  as  we  can  rise  to  think  it  is  moral  action  with  an 
end,  and  not  merely  incessant  moral  process.  All  that  is 
to  the  good.  But  the  tendencj^  is  to  lose,  in  the  moral 
automatism,  the  sense  of  judgment  as  more  than  sure 
nemesis,  as  the  work  of  a  living  and  saving  God  who  has 
already  said  His  last  and  endless  word  in  this  kind.  We 
tend  to  miss  in  judgment  the  incessant  reaction  of  His 
personal  and  absolute  holiness  as  the  last  creative  power  in 
all  being,  and  the  organising  principle  of  its  slow  evolution 
through  time.      We  are  led  to  think  more  of  the  judg- 


XI.]  HISTORY  AND  JUDGMENT  205 

ment  than  of  the  Judge.  It  then  becomes  hard,  very  often, 
to  believe  in  judgment,  or  trace  the  justice  at  work  at  all. 
And  we  come  out  of  the  welter,  perhaps,  with  little  more 
at  best  than  a  general  faith  that  there  is  a  distinction 
between  right  and  wrong,  possibly  even  a  fundamental 
one,  but  with  no  assurance  which  will  win  at  last,  whether 
the  far  end  of  it  all  will  be  a  kingdom  of  God  or  a  king- 
dom of  Satan. 

But  surely  it  is  clear  that  if  history  is  to  be  read  teleo- 
logically  at  all,  the  telos  cannot  be  reached  by  an  induction 
from  small  areas  of  the  past,  far  less  from  our  individual 
experience.  Nor,  indeed,  can  it  be  won  from  the  whole 
past,  which  may  be  but  a  small  area  of  the  whole  of 
time.  Besides,  we  need  a  principle  of  selection  among 
the  multitude  and  variety  of  past  facts  to  begin  with. 
Nor  can  we  have  that  telos  in  a  mere  intuition  of  the  present, 
a  mere  power  of  piercing  the  chaos  of  the  newspapers, 
and  reaching  the  idea  by  the  just  insight  of  genius.  For 
this,  like  all  the  intuitions  and  mysticisms,  however  fine, 
is  but  aristocratic  and  for  the  few.  And  though  genius 
can  do  much  in  that  penetrating  way,  it  has  not  jet  given 
us  the  principle  of  the  final  judgment  on  things.  Heaven's 
last  relation  to  Earth.  That  lies  deeper  than  genius  can 
go.  Genius  proceeds  from  us  rather  than  descends  on  us. 
The  insight  of  genius  does  not  rise  to  revelation  of  the 
Eternal.  It  reahses  man  rather  than  reveals  God.  It  is 
a  part  of  nature  rather  than  of  God — nature  returning 
on  itself  to  interpret  itself,  rather  than  God  giving  Himself 
in  revelation  once  for  all.  Nature,  even  in  genius,  cannot 
explain  itself  either  in  its  origin  or  destiny.  It  gives  us 
certainty  neither  about  infinite  God  nor  finite  man.  The 
last  principle  of  things  Ues  with  religion,  and  with  the 
creative  revelation  of  grace  at  the  root  of  it.  Universality 
and  finality  go  together  in  Christ,  in  whose  '  finished  work ' 
we  are  presented  with  all  the  future  in  advance.  A  real 
revelation  hke  His  gives  us  the  end  in  the   beginning. 


206  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

Grace  is  the  last  word  of  omnipotence,  as  the  collect 
greatly  says.  The  principle  of  immanent  and  ultimate 
and  saving  judgment,  and  of  reconciliation  by  judgment, 
is,  therefore,  the  principle  of  the  Cross  of  Christ  as  the 
moral  crisis  of  God  and  man,  i.e.  of  the  universe.  This 
is  the  principle  both  of  the  closing  judgment  in  time  and 
of  the  fundamental  judgment  going  on  timelessly  within 
history  and  character.  All  moves  to  the  holy  {i.e.  the 
mystically  moral)  reconciliation  in  Christ,  as  the  final 
settlement  of  all  things  and  all  souls.  That  is  what  is 
being  distilled  for  eternity  out  of  the  long  process  of 
time. 

It  is  quite  true  that  neither  revelation  nor  book  is 
there  to  give  us  a  panorama  of  the  past  or  a  programme 
of  the  future.  It  is  in  no  such  sense  that  judgment  is 
revealed.  The  Bible  is  not  a  sketch-book  of  past  things 
nor  a  picture-book  of  the  last  things.  It  has  been  especially 
discredited  by  treating  its  imaginative  sjTnbols  of  the 
future  as  if  they  were  specifications  or  working  plans  at- 
tached to  God's  new  covenant  and  contract  with  man. 
That  is  the  bane  of  a  direct  and  popular  BibHcism.  But, 
for  all  that,  Christianity  can  never  give  up  faith  in  the 
gift  to  us  in  advance  of  an  immanent  teleology  of  history, 
whose  principle  was  secured  (and  not  illustrated)  in  the 
Cross,  and  to  whose  consummation  history  moves  as  the 
kingdom  of  God  set  up  there.  Christianity  does  believe 
in  a  solution  already  real,  however  unseen.  We  now  live 
amid  the  evolution  of  the  final  crisis  and  last  judgment 
of  the  sempiternal  Cross.  All  the  moral  judgment 
moving  to  effect  in  the  career  of  souls,  societies,  and 
nations  is  the  action  of  the  Cross  as  the  final,  crucial, 
eternal  Act  of  the  moral  power  of  the  universe. 

The  bane  of  popular  Christianity  is  that  it  has  severed 
the  Cross  from  the  moral  principle  for  which  the  world 
is  built,  from  the  creative  leaven  in  active  things,  and  has 
made  it  a  second  best,  a  supplementary  device  for  the 


XI.]  HISTORY  AND  JUDGMENT  207 

rescue  of  a  section  of  mankind  who  occupy  to  it  a  certain 
telation  of  greater  or  less  piety.  Salvation,  the  Church, 
he  kingdom  become  but  the  proceeds  from  a  good  sale 
of  the  wreck  of  creation.  Our  theories  of  regeneration, 
baptismal  and  other,  rob  the  new  creation  of  its  com- 
manding relation  to  the  first.  For,  if  we  will  be  thorough, 
in  the  new  birth  creation  itself  is  created  anew,  and  not 
merely  its  wreck  ;  and  it  is  created  more  creatively,  and 
not  only  as  the  last  phase  of  the  first.  Regeneration  is 
mightier  creation.  Yet  the  Cross  has  been  made  but  a 
valuable  religious  expedient,  instead  of  the  universal  and 
creative  principle  of  the  moral  soul.  From  being  the 
judgment  focus  of  absolute  righteousness  in  all  things  it 
has  become  but  an  oasis  and  a  spring  far  to  one  side  of 
the  great  journey  of  the  race.  We  have  come  to  regard 
it  not  as  the  moral  power  but  as  rescue  from  the  moral 
power ;  because  the  idea  of  judgment  has  been  either 
distorted  in  the  historic  Cross  or  dislodged  from  it.  This 
severance  of  the  Gospel  from  public  history  and  social 
affairs,  its  monopoly  by  individuahsm,  sectionalism,  and 
pietism,  has  made  Evangelicalism  a  byword  of  national 
impotence,  by  reducing  the  ardour  of  the  kingdom  for 
many  to  no  more  than  a  devout  interest  in  propaganda, 
home  or  foreign,  to  its  extensive  rather  than  its  intensive 
culture.  To  carry  the  Cross  into  the  world  has  often 
meant  no  more  than  carrying  it  abroad  ;  carrying  it  into 
life  no  more  than  personal  piety  in  the  shape  of  resigna- 
tion or  self-sacrifice — with  the  result  that  the  one  becomes 
negative  and  the  other  indiscriminate,  for  lack  of  a  moral 
end  identical  with  the  object  of  faith.  The  Cross  is  not 
mere  submission  ;  and  self-sacrifice  has  in  itself  no  moral 
value,  since  all  turns  on  the  object  and  principle  of  its 
obedience.  Obedience  is  better  than  sacrifice  ;  and  some 
who  are  voluble  of  sacrifice  we  might  wish  more  prolific 
of  duty.  The  Cross  is  not  there  to  kindle  a  passion  of 
altruism  but  to  moralise  self-sacrifice,  and  to  save  it  from 


208  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

itself  by  its  reference  to  the  first  principle  of  religion — 
the  holy.  Yet  the  Cross  of  Christ  is  not  merely  the  holy 
summit  of  the  moral  order.  Sub  specie  ceternitatis,  it  is  i# 
creative  source.  And  it  is  the  active  principle  which 
slowly  brings  to  book  the  devices  of  men,  the  enterprises 
of  heroes,  and  the  adventures  of  nations.  It  is  a  creative 
revolution,  which  inverts  the  values  that  fired  their  passion 
and  converts  to  God's  kingdom  their  egoist  schemes.  It 
is  the  judgment-bar  of  the  mystic,  eternal,  and  immutable 
morality. 


IV 

Critical 

These  observations  may  be  illustrated  by  reference  to 
the  famous  phrase  of  Schiller  which,  I  will  say  at  once, 
represents  one  of  the  most  valuable  gifts  of  last  century 
to  the  conception  of  history — more  valuable  than  Lessing's 
view  of  it  as  the  education  of  the  race.  Die  Weltgeschichte 
ist  das  Weltgericht  ('  History  is  the  true  criticism  and  last 
judgment  of  the  world  ')  is  a  great  word.  But  it  may  hide 
in  it  also  a  great  fallacy.  It  may  easily  come  to  mean 
what  is  so  false  in  recent  pragmatism — that  efficiency 
is  the  test  of  right,  that  only  clear  fitness  survives,  that 
nothing  is  to  be  held  true  till  you  see  it  works,  that 
the  only  success  is  success.  It  does  not  do  justice  to 
the  Christian  idea.  At  first,  indeed,  it  seems  to  give  the 
Bible  principle  an  immense  expansion  ;  and  it  did,  as  the 
Bible  was  then  understood.  It  was  a  very  necessary  pro- 
test, in  the  interest  of  moral  realism,  against  the  current 
other-worldliness  of  the  judgment  idea.  It  does  much 
to  make  the  historic  process  a  moral  one,  to  ethicise  his- 
tory, to  carry  the  principle  of  judgment  into  the  order  of 
the  day,  and  make  it  an  inevitable,  searching  presence 
from  which  we  cannot  escape,  because  we  cannot  escape 


XL]  HISTORY  AND  JUDGMENT  209 

from  ourselves,  or  discard  our  moral  psychology.  It  seems 
to  infuse  righteousness  into  the  soul's  history  and  the 
course  of  affairs.  So  it  seems.  And  in  some  ways 
so  it  does.  It  certainly  recalls  us  from  melodramatic 
pictures  of  a  judgment  far  off,  and  therefore  morally 
faint  and  negligible.  But  is  it  all  gain  to  lock  eternity 
up  in  the  time  process,  to  quash  the  appeal  from  time's 
crude  justice  to  eternity,  to  lose  from  earth's  judgment 
the  idea  of  heaven's  finality  and  the  verve  of  the  soul's 
eternal  dilemma  ?  Does  it  not  lose  that  reference  to  a 
present  eternity  which  makes  judgment  a  part  of  real 
religion  ?  And,  granting  that  history  is  a  moral  process, 
are  we  left  quite  sure  that  it  is  goodness  that  is  working 
up  and  working  out  to  the  final  control  ?  Is  the  idea 
of  a  moral  entail  or  nemesis  the  chief  idea  in  judgment  ? 
Is  there  nothing  more  creative  ?  Is  man's  pursuit  by 
nemesis  really  an  educative  influence  at  the  last  ?  Is  not 
mere  punishment  morally  stupefying  ?  And  is  it  other- 
wise if  only  happiness  ensue  and  prosperity  ?  Did  not  even 
Judaism  outgrow  that  idea  ?  Is  the  idea  of  a  moral  filiation 
of  events,  an  ethical  causation  without  end — is  that  judg- 
ment ?  Are  we  not  left  at  the  mercy  of  an  endless  relativism, 
where  white  is  only  the  lightest  shade  of  black  ?  What 
did  they  found  on  who  believed  before  the  results  of  faith 
came  in  and  beUeved  to  such  purpose  in  making  them 
come  in  ?  Are  there  not  two  great  elements  lacking  here 
which  are  essential  to  the  idea  of  judgment — the  element 
of  reconstitution,  i.e.  of  redemption  or  reconciliation,  as 
something  greater  than  progress,  and  the  element  of 
finality,  as  the  moral  postulate  of  an  absolute  standard  ? 
The  ethical  process  in  mere  history  has  no  real  closes. 
The  books  are  never  made  up.  To  what  does  it  all 
move  ?  What  is  the  goal  whose  creative  emergence  all 
along  makes  the  career  ?  Can  we  say  that  Schiller's 
phrase  impUes  the  importation  of  divine  righteousness 
into  the  career  of  things  ?     How  do  we  know  that  the 


210  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [cfl. 

nexus  or  the  bias  of  the  moral  causation  in  history  is 
righteousness  at  bottom  ?  How  do  we  know  that  it  is 
more  than  eudemonist  ?  What  is  righteousness  ?  How 
can  we  be  sure  that  the  world  process  means  righteous- 
ness, till  we  either  reach  the  end,  or  receive  a  revelation 
which  gives  us  the  end  in  advance — in  any  case,  without  a 
luminous  crisis  decisive  for  the  holy  and  for  ever  ?  The 
phrase  suggests  that  judgment  consists  in  no  more  than 
an  event  entails  inevitably,  by  moral  causation,  within 
the  historic  field,  wide  or  narrow.  But  by  the  time  this 
comes  home  both  sinner  and  saint  are  beyond  its  reach, 
and  it  falls  on  an  innocent  posterity.  Does  the  judgment 
for  a  wicked  war  fall  but  on  those  it  damages,  and  miss 
its  promoters  ?  History  may  have  moral  value,  and  not 
only  scientific  connections  ;  it  may  be  a  practical  criti- 
cism of  moral  ideas  ;  but  it  is  not  a  criterion  of  moral 
values.  Nor  is  it  the  judge  of  moral  souls,  which  contain 
more  than  they  can  ever  put  into  external  effect.  The 
phrase,  I  say,  does  not  supply  the  principle  of  an  active 
teleology.  The  virtue  which  approves  itself  may  not  be 
sufficient  to  establish  itself.  It  may  wrap  itself  in  its  robe 
of  stoic  righteousness,  but  it  does  not  cast  its  mantle 
over  the  world,  and  it  seems  to  give  away  the  infinite 
moral  value  of  the  individual  soul ;  which  is  an  end  in 
itself,  which  history  cannot  read,  which  was  made  to  rest 
in  an  Oversoul,  and  which,  for  good  or  ill,  is  too  great  to 
find  its  full  expression  and  effect,  or  to  have  justice  done 
it,  in  history,  however  prolonged. 

It  is  all  part  of  the  Hegelian  tendency  to  find  finality  in 
the  moving  idea,  and  to  set  up  a  theodicy  more  reasonable 
than  religious,  because  judgment  is  diffused  in  history  as  a 
rational  process  instead  of  being  condensed  in  God's  personal 
Act  at  a  crucial,  positive  point,  creating  our  act  of  faith 
in  the  face  of  history.  It  also  destroys  the  conception  of 
judgment  as  a  personal  relation  and  crisis,  and  it  hands 
us  over  to  the  rule  of  abstract  and  will-less  law  in  the  moral 


XI.]  HISTORY  AND  JUDGMENT  211 

world  of  wills.  It  corresponds  in  ethics  to  monism  in  the 
cosmos.  Such  a  view  really  abolishes  the  idea  of  judg- 
ment as  eternity  subduing  time,  except  in  so  far  as  the 
evolving  idea  may  be  viewed  as  eternity.  It  discards 
for  serial  process  the  personal  and  dramatic  notion  of 
crisis.  It  drops  us  to  a  moving  series  of  integrations  and 
eliminations,  with  no  law  but  causation,  no  values  but 
those  that  are  relative,  and  no  standard  to  measure  whether 
movement  is  progress,  or  evolution  is  development  to  any 
end.  We  have  none  of  that  invasion  and  control  of  time 
by  eternity  which  is  so  lacking  in  '  progress,'  and  yet  is  so 
necessary  for  the  idea  of  real  growth.  It  gives  us  no  gift 
and  no  faith  of  a  final  goal  of  reconciliation,  whose  emer- 
gence makes  all  the  process  right  and  all  worth  while. 
It  destroys,  of  course,  the  idea  of  a  last  judgment  acces- 
sible in  time  and  decisive  in  eternity ;  and  it  thus  takes 
the  momentous  note  of  finaUty,  standard,  and  repose  out 
of  the  higher  life.  The  more  wide  our  knowledge  the  less 
is  anything  final,  the  more  is  everything  relative  ;  even  evil 
is  but  good  in  the  making.  In  seeming  to  ethicise  history 
it  turns  its  action  into  a  procession  of  principles  devouring 
persons  ;  and  so  it  really  lowers  the  dramatic  quality, 
the  critical  gravity,  and  the  moral  value  both  of  history 
and  life.  It  co-operates  with  the  loss  of  faith  in  a  real 
judgment  by  Christ's  Cross  to  reduce  the  moral  tempera- 
ture even  amidst  ethical  ardours,  to  quench  moral  insight 
in  mere  ethical  interest,  to  starve  the  idea  of  holiness, 
and  therefore  blanch  the  idea  of  evil.  It  tends  to  make 
the  real  seriousness  of  salvation  unintelligible,  to  produce 
disciples  rather  than  converts,  confessors,  or  apostles, 
and  to  lower  the  worth  of  Christ  to  a  spiritual  influence  or 
ideal  that  would  not  essentially  suffer  if  the  Cross  were 
lopped  from  His  life.  All  that  is  implied  in  a  phrase  like 
'  the  fullness  of  time,'  vanishes  in  a  process  which  seems 
infinitely  expansive  but  is  really  levelling,  with  a  horizon 
but  no  content  nor  crisis.     It  widens  the  area  of  the 


212  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

moral  monotony  in  mere  process  by  turning  judgment 
from  the  vital  act  of  a  person  to  the  quick  march  of 
ideas.  To  live  may  be  growth,  but  it  is  not  Christ.  Life 
grows  more  complex  but  more  discursive,  more  busy 
but  more  meaningless,  more  involved  but  involving  less. 
It  ramifies  infinitely,  and  crj^stallises  not  at  all.  It  has 
nothing  to  crystallise  on.  It  is  an  elaborate  tale  signif3ang 
nothing  final  or  eternal — endless  differentiation,  but  what 
satisfaction  ?  It  becomes  a  thing  of  infinite  mutnces, 
grades,  variations,  discriminations  of  coarse  and  fine, 
more  or  less,  and  so  forth,  but  not  of  good  and  evil,  not 
their  grand  and  eternal  dilemma,  which,  after  all,  makes 
possible  moral  choice,  moral  dignity,  and  life's  responsible 
value.  Life  becomes  more  aesthetic  than  ethical.  God 
is  superfluous,  or  at  best  the  Trustee  and  Executor  of  a 
moral  order  which  is  easily  thought  of  as  detachable  from 
Him  ;  and  we  are  then  the  victims  of  moral  law,  and  not 
the  objects  of  moral  redemption.  The  moral  law  itself 
may  then  sink  from  something  human  to  something  which 
is  but  egoism,  individual  or  national — as  among  the 
combatants  in  the  war  we  hear  loud  appeals  to  a  tutelary 
God,  but  entire  silence  about  Christ,  His  judgment,  or 
His  kingdom.  The  nations,  relapsing  into  Hebraism 
at  best  and  Paganism  at  worst,  lose  the  world- Christ  in 
a  tribal  God. 


V 

Ironical 

In  many  cases  in  life  the  important  thing  is  not  what 
is  said  but  what  is  not  said.  That  is  what  the  experienced 
man  is  most  concerned  to  interpret.  That  is  what  he 
comes  either  to  distrust  or  to  rely  on  most.  When  we  have 
to  reckon  men  up,  or  to  revise  our  interviews  with  them, 
we  may  attach  most  weight  not  to  the  words  we  heard  but 


XI.]  HISTORY  AND  JUDGMENT  213 

to  the  one  remark  we  expected  but  it  did  not  come.  It 
is  so  in  nature.  The  stillness  of  the  night  often  seems 
more  fall  and  more  impressive  than  the  bustle  of  the 
day.  Its  calm  is  a  rebuke,  or  at  least  a  monition,  to  the 
day's  passion  and  the  day's  haste  ;  the  repose  is  full  of 
subtle  question.  So  as  we  rise  in  the  scale  and  business 
of  life  the  silence  may  be  more  eloquent  and  even  active 
than  the  sound ;  and  more  is  meant  by  reserve  than  by 
response.  The  criticism  by  silence  can  be  as  severe  as 
any. 

God's  judgment  on  things  and  in  things  is  not  absent 
because  it  is  still,  and  it  is  not  out  of  action  because  it  is 
not  obvious  nor  obtrusive.  The  Gnostics  found  in  the 
Silence  the  Fullness.  There  is  a  judgment  which  is  not 
visitation  but  irony.  Its  tarrying  works  upon  us  more 
than  its  coming.  It  enlists  our  imagination  as  its  ally. 
It  broods  evasive,  provoking,  potent.  If  God  do  not  yet 
intervene  on  earth  He  sits  in  heaven — sits  and  laughs. 
And  His  smile  is  inscrutable,  and  elusive,  only  not  cruel : 
the  smile  of  endless  power  and  patience,  very  still,  and 
very  secure,  and  deeply,  dimly  kind.  The  judgment  of 
God  can  be  as  lofty  and  sleepless  as  the  irony  of  heaven 
over  earth,  or  the  irony  of  history  upon  earth.  '  Thou 
didst  deceive  me  and  I  was  deceived.'  Heine  spoke 
daringly  of  the  Aristophanes  of  heaven.  But  that  is  not 
the  smile  that  any  Christian  can  see  or  credit  over  us. 
Yet  it  need  not  be  either  faithless  or  foolish  to  speak  of  the 
Socratic  heavens.  God  seems  so  slow,  so  clouded,  so 
fumbling  in  His  ways ;  and  His  questions  that  do  reach 
us  seem  so  irrelevant,  so  naive — but  they  are  so  dangerous. 
The  powers  that  delay  but  do  not  forget  are  not  simple, 
impotent,  or  confused  as  they  tarry.  If  fire  do  not  fall  from 
the  heavens  they  yet  rain  influence  down.  There  is  a 
world  of  meaning  in  their  gaze  upon  men  whom  they  do 
not  yet  smite.  It  is  neither  a  stony  nor  a  bovine  stare. 
All  the  world  is  being  summed  up  by  that  bland  sky. 


214  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

Its  liglit  is  invisibly  actinic  on  earth.  What  seems  dis- 
tance and  irrelevance,  weak  and  unweeting,  may  well  put 
us  on  our  guard.  The  heavens  are  not  so  simple  as  they 
seem,  nor  is  God  so  mocked  as  He  consents  to  appear,  and 
to  appear  for  long.  He  gives  our  desire,  and  it  shrivels 
our  soul.  Of  our  pleasant  vices  He  is  making  instruments 
to  scourge  us.  The  passions,  ambitions,  and  adventures 
of  men  go  on  to  achieve  their  end  through  a  riot  of  worldli- 
ness,  wickedness,  defiance,  and  guilt ;  but  they  are  after 
all  the  levers  for  a  mightier  purpose  than  theirs,  which 
thrives  on  their  collapse.  The  wrath  of  man  works  the 
righteousness  of  God.  Satan's  last  chagrin  is  his  contri- 
bution to  God's  kingdom.  The  great  agents  of  the 
divine  purpose  have  often  no  idea  of  it.  '  C^tus,  my 
servant.'  One  thing  they  do  with  all  their  might,  but 
God  accomplishes  by  them  quite  another.  Julius  Caesar 
never  intended  nor  conceived  the  Roman  Church  ;  but 
it  came  by  him,  and  he  was  murdered.  His  ambition  was 
his  death,  but  his  great  fimction  was  a  thing  vaster  than 
the  Roman  Empire.  There  is  a  certain  truth  (if  we  will 
be  very  careful  with  it)  in  the  early  Christian  fantasy 
that  Satan  was  befooled  by  the  patient  naivete  of  Christ. 
This  is  the  irony  of  history — when  the  very  success  of 
an  idea  creates  the  conditions  that  belie  it,  smother  it, 
and  replace  it.  Catholicism  becomes  the  Papacy.  The 
care  for  truth  turns  to  the  Inquisition.  The  rehgious 
orders,  vowed  to  poverty,  die  and  rot  of  wealth.  A 
revival  movement  becomes  a  too,  too  prosperous  and 
egoistic  Church.  Freedom  as  soon  as  it  is  secured  becomes 
tjrranny.  A  German  defeat  to-day  would  have  begun 
-with  the  victory  of  1870,  for  which  God  was  rapturously 
praised,  and  with  the  Siegestrunkenheit  that  started  there. 
Misfortune  need  not  be  judgment,  nor  need  defeat ;  but 
victory  may  be.     And  defeat  may  be  victory. 

The  irony  seems  most  cruel  when  it  overtakes  one  who 
is  the  slave  of  no  ambition  but,  like  Socrates,  is  filled  with 


XI.]  HISTORY  AND  JUDGMENT  215 

the  great  idea,  or  like  Christ  with  the  Holy  Ghost — men 
whose  passion  did  not  need  to  be  overruled  for  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven,  but  was  purely  and  wholly  engrossed 
with  it.  We  are  faced  with  the  gigantic  and  ironic  para- 
dox of  the  Cross,  which  crushes  the  best  to  raise  both 
them  and  the  world. 

To  the  questions  stirred  by  judgment,  dehcate  or  pal- 
pable, there  is  no  answer  in  any  philosophy  even  of  history. 
But  there  is  in  theology — ^in  a  theology  that  takes  its 
stand,  first  and  last,  on  the  judgment  in  the  Cross.  This 
Act  is  everywhere  in  relation  with  earthly  junctures  and 
passions,  and  everyrN'here  their  master,  however  evasive 
the  mastery  be  and  concealed.  Love  can  easily  become 
impatient  of  either  sublimity  or  irony,  till  it  find  itself 
in  the  Cross  of  Christ.  It  can  become  too  soft  to  scorn, 
and  too  kind  to  judge.  The  devotees  of  the  white  passions 
know  little  of  the  red,  and  nothing  of  the  black.  They 
have  not  descended  into  hell.  But  in  Christ's  moral, 
historic,  final  Cross  alone  do  we  learn  to  interpret  the 
irony  of  history  as  the  irony  of  Providence,  the  tender, 
portentous  smile  of  a  victorious,  patient  God.  If  His 
words  are  acts,  so  is  that  slow  smile.  Heaven  does  not 
laugh  loud  but  it  laughs  last — when  all  the  world  will 
laugh  in  its  light.  It  is  a  smile  more  immeasurable  than 
ocean's  and  more  deep ;  it  is  an  irony  gentler  and  more 
patient  than  the  bending  skies,  the  irony  of  a  long  love 
and  the  play  of  its  sure  mastery ;  it  is  the  smile  of  the 
holy  in  its  silent  omnipotence  of  mercy.  The  stillness  of 
those  heavens  that  our  guns  cannot  reach  is  not  a  cir- 
cumambient indifference,  it  is  an  irony  of  the  Eternal 
power  in  sure  control  of  human  passion,  a  sleepless  judg- 
ment on  it,  an  incessant  verdict,  very  active,  mighty, 
and  monitory  for  those  that  have  ears  to  hear — yea, 
very  merciful.  Greater  than  the  irony  in  history  is  the 
irony  over  it.  Great  is  the  irony  of  persecution  by  the 
Church,  of  cruelty  coming  from  culture,  of  corruption  from 


216  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

the  very  success  of  purity,  of  a  colossal  egoism  in  the  wake 
of  much  self-denial.  But  greater  and  other  is  the  irony 
of  those  skies  that  look  down  on  the  whole  earth  and 
make  its  ironies  little — look  down,  so  inert  yet  so  ominous^ 
so  still  yet  so  eloquent,  so  vacant  yet  so  charged  with  the 
judgment  that  the  Cunctator  Maximus  is  incessantly 
passing  on  man — penetrating  by  its  slow  insistence,  wearing 
earth  down  with  its  monotone  of  doom.  We  have  that 
sublime,  and  ironic,  and  ceaseless  judgment  in  the  irony 
of  Christ  before  Pilate — all  Heaven  taking  sentence  from 
rude  Rome,  the  chief  outcast  of  the  world  judging  the 
world  with  the  last  judgment  of  its  God. 

The  non-intervention  of  God  bears  very  heavy  interest, 
and  He  is  greatly  to  be  feared  when  He  does  nothing. 
He  moves  in  long  orbits,  out  of  sight  and  sound.  But 
He  always  arrives.  Nothing  can  arrest  the  judgment  of 
the  Cross,  nothing  shake  the  judgment-seat  of  Christ. 
The  world  gets  a  long  time  to  pay,  but  all  the  accounts 
are  kept — to  the  uttermost  farthing.  Lest  if  anything 
were  forgotten  there  might  be  something  unforgiven, 
unredeemed,  and  unholy  still. 


xn.]        THE  CONQUEST  OF  TEVIE  BY  ETERNITY  217 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE   CONQUEST  OF  TIME  BY   ETERNITY 

I  BEGAN  this  book  with  an  outline  as  overture,  I  would 
close  it  with  a  resume  as  coda. 

Life  begins  as  a  problem,  but  when  it  ends  well  it  ends 
as  a  faith  :  a  great  problem,  therefore  a  great  faith. 
Ordinary  experience  gives  us  the  first  half,  it  sets  a  problem ; 
but  the  second  half,  the  answer  of  faith  to  us,  comes  from 
God's  revelation  of  grace.  As  we  here  pass  from  the  one 
to  the  other  it  should  be  on  large  Hues,  not  that  we  may 
simply  descant  on  life  in  a  Uterary  way,  but  that  we  may 
magnify  the  greatness  of  Christ.  Literature  after  all  has 
but  a  small  Christ ;  and  a  small  Christ,  a  small  salvation, 
fits  ill  to  so  great  a  world.  And  we  cannot  have  a  great 
Christ  who  is  not  a  theological  Christ.  The  Christ  of  the 
world,  and  of  its  eternity,  must  be  substantially  the  Christ 
of  the  great  creeds.  The  deeper  thought  is  the  more  it 
must  theologise.  To  overcome  the  world  and  master  life 
takes  all  the  deep  resources  of  Eternal  God — Father,  Son, 
and  Holy  Spirit.  '  When  the  Gospel  is  duly  preached  it  is 
the  Trinity  that  preaches.'  Christ,  if  He  is  as  deep  as 
His  religion,  is  not  the  great  problem,  but  the  great 
answer. 

\.  Life,  then,  is  a  problem.  It  offers  a  task  rather  than 
an  enjoyment.  The  soul  must  be  achieved.  The  king- 
dom is  above  all  a  gift,  but  it  is  also  a  conquest.  We  are 
here  to  fight  the  good  fight  rather  than  to  have  a  good 
time.  The  people  to  whom  life  is  only  an  excursion,  a 
picnic,  a  stroll,  or  a  game  grow  more  and  more  outlanders 


218  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

in  society.  And  the  war  will  do  much  to  quench  that 
spirit.  Most  people — more  people  than  ever,  at  least — ^feel 
life's  problem  to-day  more  sharply  than  ever  before. 

Indeed,  some  feel  nothing  else.  The  trouble  with  so 
many  serious  minds  among  us  is  that  hfe  is  no  more  than 
a  problem  to  them.  They  are  loaded  with  the  riddle  of 
it.  They  are  victims  of  the  age  of  uncertainty  and  unrest. 
It  is  not  work  that  kills,  but  such  worry.  What  does  the 
hfe  of  worry  mean  but  that  life  is  felt  to  be  much  more 
full  of  problems  than  of  power  ? 

2.  To  take  another  step.  The  problem  is  disquieting, 
anxious,  and  even  tragic.  It  is  not  simply  interesting 
and  amusing  :  not  like  a  chess  problem,  or  a  mathe- 
matical, or  a  hterary,  to  be  solved  at  arm's  length  by 
our  wits  for  the  pleasure  of  the  thiug.  We  are  in  no 
Kriegspiel,  but  in  the  real  thing  always.  It  touches  the 
nerve.  It  is  a  problem,  it  is  not  a  riddle.  It  has  become 
a  war.  It  involves  the  reahties  of  life,  the  things  most 
dear,  solemn,  searching,  commanding.  Darkness — is  it 
the  cloud  of  night  or  the  mist  of  dawn  ?  Disaster — is  it 
there  to  bum  up  life,  or  to  temper  and  anneal  it ;  to  crush 
hfe,  or  to  rouse  in  us  the  spirit  that  overcomes  it  ?  Death 
— does  it  explode  life  or  expand  it,  stifle  it  or  solve  it  ? 
Life  is  not  a  seductive  puzzle ;  it  is  a  tragic  battle  for 
existence,  for  power,  for  eternal  life. 

There  were  two  powerful  thinkers  in  Germany  last 
century  whose  influence  was  not  only  academic  but  popular 
(for  they  had  that  gift)  ;  and  they  did  not  only  affect 
Germany  but  the  world.  I  mean  Strauss  and  Nietzsche. 
Both  were  apostles  of  negation.  But  the  negation  of 
Nietzsche  is  a  far  higher  and  deeper  thing  than  that  of 
Strauss.  And  it  is  a  more  hopeful  thing  because  more 
thorough.  It  is  a  proof  of  progress  that  the  negation  of 
the  one  has  displaced  that  of  the  other,  and  superseded  it. 
Strauss  grows  obsolete.  He  was  the  supreme  rationahst 
and  optimist.    He  represented  civihsation,  culture  without 


XII.]        THE  CONQUEST  OF  TIME  BY  ETERNITY  219 

tragedy,  sanity  with  its  aplomb  and  its  self-satisfaction. 
He  came  with  a  Hegelian  system  into  which  everything 
could  be  fitted,  and  where  everything  was  right.  He  saw 
life  as  a  vast  plane  in  which  everything  was  to  be  'placed' 
or  taken  up.  But  Nietzsche  saw  life  as  a  vast  depth,  as 
a  throbbing  reaUty,  a  tragic  tangle,  a  debacle  of  the  soul, 
and  not  as  a  varied  landscape  or  a  cosmic  process.  The 
engrossing  thing  in  life  for  him  was  not  in  the  rational, 
but  in  what  refused  rationahty,  and  could  not  be  placed 
and  appraised.  Life  was  not  evolutionary  but  revolu- 
tionary. Its  value  was  more  personal ;  whereas  to  Strauss 
it  was  more  processional  and  mechanical.  Nietzsche  felt, 
as  millions  feel,  that  life  culn\inated  in  its  tragic  experi- 
ences, and  that  whatever  solved  the  tragedy  of  hfe  solved 
all  life.  That  is  why  I  say  his  challenge  of  Christianity  is 
greater,  more  incisive,  more  searching  and  taxing  than 
that  of  Strauss,  and  therefore  more  promising  and  more 
sj^mpathetic,  for  all  his  contempt.  He  was  not  a  spectator 
but  an  actor  in  this  tragedy,  so  much  so  that  it  unhinged 
his  mind.  To  grasp  the  real,  deep  tragedy  of  life  is  enough 
to  imhinge  any  mind  which  does  not  find  God's  solution 
of  it  in  the  central  tragedy  of  the  Cross  and  its  redemption. 

But  life's  tragic  problem  to-day  is  not  merely  discussed 
in  salons  by  philosophers  and  their  circles,  nor  by  petits- 
maitres  and  amateurs  of  thought ;  it  lays  hold  of  almost 
every  man  who  takes  things  seriously  at  all.  And  especi- 
ally it  takes  rehgion  seriously  and  gets  beyond  the  Cheeryble 
brothers.  Life  is  not  a  riddle  for  a  tea-party,  but  a  battle 
of  blood.  It  is  certainly  not  a  matter  of  snug  optimism 
in  philosophy,  nor  of  mauve  rehgion  in  fiction. 

3.  The  next  step  is  that  there  is  a  solution  to  the 
problem.  Our  battle  is  not  a  sport  for  heaven.  I  am 
thinking  of  the  a-theology  of  Thomas  Hardy,  and  the 
close  of  Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles.  Life's  tragedy  is  not 
God's  jest.  It  is  working  out  a  real  issue  with  Him.  The 
struggle  is  not  an  end  in  itself.     We  are  not  here  hko 


220  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

hunters  who  care  everything  for  the  chase  and  nothing 
for  the  quarry.  The  quest  does  promise  conquest.  The 
riddle  of  the  painful  earth  has  its  final  answer.  The 
Christian  message  is  that  the  answer  is  there,  and  is  the 
gift  of  God.  It  is  provided.  And  it  is  practical.  It  is 
done  more  than  spoken,  and  done  to  our  hand.  We  are 
not  asked  to  waste  our  labour  on  the  insoluble.  At  the 
risk  of  being  called  dogmatists  the  Church,  the  pulpit,  the 
Gospel  are  all  there  to  say  that  there  is  a  solution,  that  it 
is  given  us  rather  than  won  by  us,  and  already  done  and 
not  merely  shown.  If  there  is  no  foregone  solution,  these 
voices  have  no  right  to  speak.  But  they  say  there  is  a 
solution,  and  they  not  only  say  there  is,  but  they  are 
there  to  bring  it,  and  give  it,  and  stake  life  on  it.  As 
man  dogmatises  to  nature,  God  dogmatises  to  man. 
'  There  remaineth  a  rest  for  the  people  of  God.' 

4.  StiU,  a  step  is  to  be  taken  which  I  have  partly  antici- 
pated. The  solution  is  practical,  not  philosophical.  It 
is  not  really  an  answer  to  a  riddle  but  a  victory  in  a  battle. 
A  life  problem  cannot  be  thought  out  but  Uved  out.  Man 
conquers  by  faith  and  not  by  philosophy.  Philosophy 
itself  begins  by  trusting ;  it  trusts  our  faculties. 

Thought  is  a  mighty  and  precious  power,  but  on  the 
last  things  it  does  more  to  enlarge  our  field  than  to  steady 
our  feet.  It  gives  us  range,  not  footing  ;  a  horizon  rather 
than  a  foundation.  It  does  not  estabhsh  the  soul,  but 
widens  its  vision.  It  extends  our  reach  more  than  it 
fixes  our  grasp.  It  therefore  often  magnifies  the  problem 
rather  than  solves  it.  Truly,  that  is  a  great  service. 
To  greaten  the  problem  is  to  prepare  for  a  great  answer. 
Faith  is  not  there  as  an  asylum  for  those  who  are  too  lazy 
or  shallow  to  think.  But,  though  thought  may  tax  faith 
mightily,  it  cannot  do  its  work.  It  gives  it  a  grand  chal- 
lenge, but  it  has  not  faith's  final  word.  There  is  something 
that  gives  us  power  to  five  and  conquer,  where  thought 
may  only  raise  challenge  and  doubt.     Thought  opens  a 


xn.]        THE  CONQUEST  OF  TIME  BY  ETERNITY  221 

world  ahead  of  us,  but  faith  forces  us  back  into  the  soul 
and  its  case.  Faith  must  be  more  conservative  than 
thought ;  for  it  is  deeper.  The  vaster  the  world  that 
thought  opens,  the  vaster  is  the  question  it  puts  ;  and  the 
answers,  the  solutions,  that  fitted  a  small  world,  go  out  of 
date  in  a  large.  But  the  solution,  the  secret,  of  the  soul, 
is  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for  ever.  It  is  Christ 
dead  and  risen  that  has  the  key  of  life.  It  is  living  faith 
in  His  living,  giving,  and  saving  God. 

5.  So,  the  practical  solution  of  life  by  the  soul  is  out- 
side life.  The  destiny  of  experience  is  beyond  itself.  The 
fines  of  fife's  moral  movement  and  of  thought's  nisus  con- 
verge in  a  point  beyond  life  and  history.  This  world  is  only 
complete  in  another ;  it  is  part  and  prelude  of  another,  and 
runs  up  into  it,  and  comes  home  in  it  as  body  does  in  soul. 

What  is  meant  when  we  speak  of  another  world  ?  We 
do  not  mean  only  one  that  begins  at  death.  We  do  not 
mean  a  new  tract  of  time  beyond  the  grave,  but  another 
order,  another  dimension,  of  things,  that  both  haunts  the 
precincts  and  fills  the  spaces  of  this  life  always. 

We  may  iUustrate  from  that  great  mirror  of  fife — the 
stage.  History  is  a  grand  drama,  it  is  not  a  mere  process. 
It  is  not  a  book  of  Genesis  but  a  book  of  Job,  not  a  succes- 
sion of  generations,  but  one  vast  act  of  regeneration.  (It 
is  certainly  more  than  a  mere  school  or  palaestra  for  train- 
ing.) It  is  not  a  swelfing  procession  of  people  or  of  prin- 
ciples. It  has  a  providence,  an  issue,  a  teleology,  a 
denouement.  And  all  great  drama,  Greek  or  Shakespearean, 
has  a  divinity  over  it  for  its  providence.  That  was  the 
judgment  of  these  great  seers  on  fife.  God  is  in  human 
affairs,  and  not  simply  as  an  immanence  (what  does  that 
matter  ?),  but  as  a  control.  All  life  has  God  and  His 
vast  providence  and  purpose  in  it.  Now  aU  dramas  are 
either  comedies  or  tragedies.  If  life  were  a  great  comedy, 
the  grand  solution  and  reconcilement  would  come  in  its 
palpable  close.     AU  would  be  gathered  up  and  finished  ofi 


222  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [cH. 

there.  Life  would  be  rounded,  after  some  jars,  with  a 
heavenly  smile.  We  should  have  but  the  story  with  the 
happy  ending,  all  in  one  volume.  But  life  is  too  large, 
and  it  moves  in  curves  too  great,  to  be  trimmed  down  and 
rounded  off  in  our  brief  first  volume.  There  are  two 
volumes  at  least.  The  powers  at  war  in  it  (if  I  change  the 
figure)  are  too  vast  to  settle  the  eternal  issue  in  a  campaign 
so  short. 

'  History,'  says  Wellhausen,  meaning  the  course  of 
history,  '  takes  no  account  of  the  good  will.  Indeed, 
altogether,  it  does  not  reckon  with  men  but  with  acts.  It 
does  not  confine  the  effects  of  actions  to  the  doer  ;  it 
punishes  folly  and  weakness  heavier  than  sin.  It  can 
make  no  act  as  if  it  had  never  been.  It  takes  no  notice 
of  change  of  heart.  In  short,  history  is,  in  its  effect  on 
the  individual,  a  tragedy ;  and  no  tragedy  has  a  satis- 
fying close.  And  in  the  case  of  the  prophets,  history 
carried  their  position  far  beyond  their  people — yea,  beyond 
the  world.' 

If  we  turn  to  the  modem  mind,  and  if  we  read  the  series 
of  Shakespeare's  plays  in  their  order,  we  should  see  this 
illustrated  as  we  moved  from  As  You  Like  It  to  Hamlet, 
Lear,  and  Othello.  As  the  passions  grow  in  greatness,  the 
solution  at  death  becomes  more  incomplete,  more  of  a 
patchwork.  The  action  is  not  concluded  within  the  play. 
It  goes  sounding  on  a  dim  and  perilous  wblj  beyond.  The 
curtain  does  not  end  all.  Even  if  the  close  be  no  more 
than  a  dim  celestial  sound  of  harpers  harping  on  their 
harps,  Shakespeare  does  stir  the  prophetic  sense  of  the 
Divinity  throughout  all,  and  the  great  surmise  of  a  solution 
beyond.  Such  serious  art  issues  in  rehgion — the  moral 
realism  of  tragedy  in  supernatural  faith.  And  so,  as  the 
scale,  complexity,  and  gravity  of  human  life  grow  in  history 
and  civilisation,  as  the  dimensions  of  the  soul  expand,  the 
divine  solution  is  pushed  outside  fife  more  and  more.  The 
key  is  in  the  Beyond  ;    though   not   necessarily  beyond 


XII.]        THE  CONQUEST  OF  TIME  BY  ETERNITY  223 

death,  but  beyond  the  world  of  the  obvious,  and  palpable, 
and  common-sensible.  (Yea,  beyond  the  inward  it  really 
is.)  The  solution  of  all  is  indicated  as  outside  all.  But 
it  is  indicated.  The  unhappy  endings  do  so  indicate  to 
the  seer's  eye.  Failure  is  not  yet  destruction  nor  final 
defeat.  Such  closes  are  both  prayers  and  prophecies. 
They  mean  that  God  alone  may  end  things  when  they 
become  as  bad  as  they  are  great.  '  Real  life  is  always 
misrepresented  by  those  who  wish  to  make  it  lead  up  to 
a  conclusion.  God  alone  may  do  that.  The  greatest 
geniuses  have  never  concluded  '  (Flaubert). 

And  so  it  should  always  be  in  great  art.  Why  should 
any  writer  throw  down  before  us  the  sordid,  confused, 
miserable,  or  tragic  in  Hfe  if  he  cannot  set  them  in  that 
divine  Ught  or  its  dawn  ?  For  writer  or  reader  to  be  able 
to  linger  on  these  things,  and  carefully  set  them  out 
unrelieved  and  unredeemed,  may  betoken  hard  nerves  or 
shrewd  sense  more  than  true  insight  or  triumphant  faith. 
We  need  not  demand  happy  endings  if  only  we  are  made 
to  feel  the  atmosphere  of  moral  triumph,  the  presentiment 
of  a  grand  consummation,  and  the  dawn  of  an  eternal 
reconcihation.  '  The  play,  with  Shakespeare,  is  not  all. 
It  but  shapes  for  something  beyond.  And  so  we  take  our 
stand  according  to  the  judgment  of  the  Divinity  beyond. 
We  beheve  what  we  cannot  see,  and  so  we  are  exalted  and 
purged  in  our  outlook  on  life  '  (Darrell  Figgis  on  Shake- 
speare). We  settle  down  at  last  only  in  God's  estimate 
of  life,  God's  judgment  of  it  all,  God's  gift  to  it,  God's 
product  from  it.  We  sit  down  in  His  kingdom.  The 
course  of  history  is  not  the  world  judgment,  as  has  been 
too  Hghtly  said  since  Schiller.  It  is  not  time  that  judges 
time,  but  eternity  always  looking  in  upon  time.  After  death 
the  real  judgment !  '  But  what  a  terror  to  add  to  Hfe  ! ' 
it  may  be  said.  '  Why  haunt  and  cow  us  thus  ? '  But 
surely  rather,  what  a  hope  and  joy  !  Judgment  is  the 
grand  rectification  of  all  things.     Such  is  the  Bible,  the 


224  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

Christian,  idea  of  judgment.  It  is  a  joy,  a  glorious  hope. 
You  think  of  hell  and  heaven — but  think  of  righteousness, 
with  all  things  lying  glorious  in  that  golden  hght,  and 
their  traffic  moving  mightily  and  sweetly  in  its  glow. 

Was  it  not  pre-eminently  as  I  have  described  with  the 
greatest  of  all  life-dramas,  the  tragedy  of  Christ  ?  Did 
the  earthly  fate  of  that  soul  fit  its  sanctity  ?  Did  death 
make  a  rounded,  closed,  finished  thing  of  that  life — a  thing 
aesthetically  complete  like  the  life  of  the  aged  Goethe  or 
Wordsworth  ?  No,  indeed.  So  much  so  that  some  have 
ventured  to  say  He  never  was,  and  never  claimed  to  be, 
Messiah  on  earth ;  He  was  only  to  be  Messiah  when  He 
returned  from  heaven  to  earth  for  a  new  and  glorious 
career.  That  view  is  but  partly  true — true  in  what  it 
affirms,  not  in  what  it  denies.  It  is  true  in  so  far  as  that 
the  only  explanation  of  that  death  comes  from  beyond  it ; 
not  from  Christ's  earthly  teaching  among  His  disciples, 
but  from  His  posthumous  inspiration  which  made  them 
apostles  of  a  victorious  Cross  that  settled  eternal  things. 
That  Cross  was  not  for  them  a  mart;^Tdom  sealing  the  past 
but  a  redemption  securing  the  future.  If  the  Cross  was  a 
mere  martjrrdom,  and  ended  all,  it  really  upset  all.  It  did 
not  overcome  the  world.  It  solved  nothing.  Nay,  it  aggra- 
vated everything.  It  deepened  the  problem.  The  best 
of  men  met  the  worst  of  fates  and  succumbed,  and  God 
said  nothing  and  did  nothing.  No  solemn  shock  of 
judgment  justified  Christ  or  confounded  His  slayers.  His 
faith  was  the  great  illusion.  Nay,  the  Cross  alone  is  no 
solution  without  the  solution  for  the  Cross  itself,  the 
Resurrection,  and  ail  its  train  beyond  Christ's  death.  The 
solution  of  fife  is  death  shown  practically  as  a  victory 
over  death  of  every  kind. 

Consider  in  this  light  also  the  vast  drama  of  history. 
Again  remember  my  object.  It  is  to  glorify  the  creative 
finality  of  Christ — not  to  enlarge  on  evolution.  There  are 
happily  still  people  who  ask  what  all  the  long  and  tragic 


XII.]        THE  CONQUEST  OF  TIME  BY  ETERNITY  225 

train  of  history  means,  what  great  thing  does  it  intend, 
what  destiny  is  it  moving  to,  where  its  close  shall  be. 
To  what  do  all  things  work  together  ?  They  ask  what  is 
it  all  worth  at  last,  what  is  to  be  the  end  of  earth's  long 
historic  day.  Is  it  sheer  oblivion  or  another  morning  ? 
Has  history  a  destiny  worth  all  its  awful  cost  ?  Do  aU 
its  large  Unes  converge  on  smythmg,  its  throbbing  sorrows, 
its  soaring  aspirations,  its  tragedies  sordid  or  subUme,  its 
dreadful  conflicts,  its  splendid  achievements,  its  miserable 
failures,  its  broken  hearts  and  ruined  civiHsations,  its 
conquests  over  nature  arid  its  collapses  into  it — do  they 
all  curve  in  some  vast  trend  and  draw  together  to  a  due 
close  ?  Is  it  an  end  that  can  ever  make  them  worth  while  ? 
Do  they  aU  work  together  for  good  and  love  ?  What 
does  man  mean  ?  Or  are  you  so  happy  with  the  children, 
or  so  engrossed  in  your  enterprises,  that  you  can  spare 
no  attention  to  ask  about  the  movement,  the  meaning, 
the  fate  of  the  race  ?  There  is  a  whole  type  of  religion  to 
which  such  questions  are  just  uninteUigible. 

When  we  do  rise  to  ask  such  questions,  where  do  we 
find  the  answer  ?  Can  we  find  it  by  questioning  our 
single  soul  and  Hstening  to  the  voices  there  ?  Because  I 
am  saved,  or  because  I  am  sanguine,  because  I  see  an  inner 
fight,  or  hear  an  inner  voice,  can  I  be  sure  of  the  salvation 
of  the  world  ?  Or  do  we  find  it  by  studying  the  whole 
arena  and  course  of  history,  so  far  as  gone,  and  drawing 
conclusions,  making  inductions,  generafisations,  forecasts, 
from  that  ?  How  can  we  ?  Only  a  small  part  of  history 
has  unrolled.  Can  we  be  sure  that  the  long,  long  future 
will  bear  out  the  hopeful  signs  we  see  in  the  brief  past, 
the  narrow  present  ?  Can  we  observe  in  the  compass  of 
history  any  convergence  of  spiritual  Lines  which  go  out 
beyond  affairs  to  meet,  apparently,  in  some  grand  point 
in  the  unseen  world  ?  Supposing  you  did  mark  such  a 
trend,  how  do  you  know  that,  outside  history,  some 
devilish  power  may  not  one  day  strike  in  and  shatter  all 


226  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

the  Hnes  and  drifts  that  were  pointmg  so  hopefully  as 
long  as  they  remained  within  the  sphere  of  observation  ? 
Why  should  you  be  sure  that  the  convergence  goes  on 
beyond  observation  for  ever  ?  You  cannot  be  sure.  What 
is  it  in  history  that  makes  us  believe  in  man,  in  a  glorious 
future  and  a  completed  destiny  for  him  ?  Can  man  ex- 
plain himself  ?  Can  his  heart  explain  him  ?  His  poets  ? 
Does  the  mere  hero  really  overcome  the  whole  world,  and 
pluck  out  for  us  the  heart  of  the  eternal  mystery  ?  Can 
all  the  heroes  put  together  jdeld  their  own  secret,  yield 
it  so  that  we  need  no  Saviour,  we  and  they  ?  We  may 
indeed  gain  some  hope  from  such  sources,  especially  if 
we  are  of  a  hopeful  temperament,  and  Hve  in  a  hopeful 
time.  But  can  we  reach  faith  in  that  way,  the  eternal 
victory  over  the  world,  the  triumphant  certainty  of  a 
glorious  and  stable  consummation  to  make  us  steadfast, 
immovable,  teeming  in  the  work  of  the  Lord  ? 

No,  we  cannot.  If  a  few  choice  souls  can,  the  race 
cannot,  a  whole  Church  cannot.  For  one  thing,  if  history 
could  explain  itself,  it  could  explain  Christ  as  a  part  of  it. 
And,  if  the  general  course  of  history  could  explain  Christ, 
that  would  reduce  Christ  to  be  but  a  product  of  history. 
Whereas  it  is  more  true  to  say  that  history  is  the  product 
of  Christ,  and  Christ  explains  history  as  it  can  never 
explain  Him.     That  at  least  is  what  He  beUeved. 

History,  man,  can  only  be  understood  by  something 
which  is  final  in  history  as  well  as  beyond  history,  some- 
thing in  it  but  not  of  it,  given  to  it  but  not  rising  from  it, 
something  that  stands  victorious  and  creative  within  it 
and  says,  '  You  are  from  below,  I  am  from  above.  You 
are  evolving  from  beneath,  I  am  descending  from  above. 
I  bring  God  to  explain  man  and  complete  him,  as  he  can 
never  explain  or  complete  himself.  I  assure  man  of  his 
eternal  future  because  it  is  I  who  secure  it.  My  great 
last  word  is  My  Deed.  My  promise  is  the  performance 
itself.     I  do  not  scrutinise  time  and  then  infer  hope.     I 


XII.]        THE  CONQUEST  OF  TIME  BY  ETERNITY  227 

bring  eternity  to  redress  the  balance  and  change  the  soul 
of  time.  I  bring  His  Word  who  alone  sees  man's  end, 
His  Deed  who  alone  secures  it.  I  bring  the  Creator  with 
a  new  Creation.     I  am  He.' 

The  world  thus  finds  its  consummation  not  in  finding 
itself  but  in  finding  its  Master  ;  not  in  coming  to  its  true 
seK  but  in  meeting  its  true  Lord  and  Saviour  ;  not  in 
overcoming  but  in  being  overcome.  We  are  more  than 
conquerors  :   we  are  redeemed. 

That  is  the  Word  of  the  Christian  Gospel.  The  great 
Word  of  Gospel  is  not  God  is  love.  That  is  too  stationary, 
too  Httle  energetic.  It  produces  a  rehgion  unable  to 
cope  with  crises.  But  the  Word  is  this — Love  is  omni- 
potent for  ever  because  it  is  holy.  That  is  the  voice  of 
Christ — raised  from  the  midst  of  time,  and  its  chaos,  and 
its  convulsions,  yet  coming  from  the  depths  of  eternity, 
where  the  Son  dwells  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father,  the  Son 
to  whom  all  power  is  given  in  heaven  and  on  earth  because 
He  overcame  the  world  in  a  Cross  holier  than  love  itself, 
more  tragic,  more  solemn,  more  dynamic  than  all  earth's 
wars.  The  key  to  history  is  the  historic  Christ  above 
history  and  in  command  of  it,  and  there  is  no  other. 

6.  This  Christ  not  only  assures  us  of  the  divine  issue 
of  it  all :  He  secures  it.  The  solution  is  not  a  promise, 
not  an  idea,  not  an  inspiration  only  ;  it  is  a  revelation, 
an  achievement,  a  victory,  a  creation  ;  it  is  the  supreme 
act  of  life,  the  grand  moral  act,  ever  finished,  ever  being 
completed,  at  the  centre  of  all  existence. 

For  the  Christ  who  died  had  overcome  first  of  all  in  His 
own  universal  soul.  It  would  have  been  of  Httle  use  that 
Christ  should  advise  His  disciples  to  be  of  good  cheer  had 
He  not  Himself  spoken  from  the  peace  of  the  world  over- 
come. It  was  the  constant  victory  in  His  soul,  rising  to 
the  finished  victory  on  the  Cross,  that  gave  His  precepts 
their  real  imperative,  and  give  it  to  this  day.  His  words 
draw  their  worth  from  His  experience,  His  consciousness, 


228  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

from  His  soul's  work,  finished  on  the  Cross  but  not  begun 
there.  We  can  look  back  to  His  words  from  His  work 
and  see  that.  They  are  the  most  precious  words  in  the 
world  because  they  were  spoken  by  the  Man  of  the  Cross, 
whose  every  crisis  was  a  vanquished  cross,  whose  Cross 
was  but  the  crisis  of  all  the  crises  of  His  life. 

His  victory,  therefore,  did  not  begin  only  when  He 
conquered  the  Cross.  He  was  thus  dying  and  conquering 
all  His  life,  in  word  and  deed.  He  never  failed  to  conquer 
at  every  crisis  of  thought  or  action.  These  were  incessant. 
He  was  a  man  of  swift  and  constant  decisions,  and  He 
conquered  for  good  and  all  in  the  crisis  which  was  the 
crisis  of  all  the  rest.  His  words  do  not  fail  to  reflect  this 
inner  victory.  They  are  all  autobiographical  indirectly. 
So,  while  Hving,  and  before  He  is  crucified.  He  still  says, 
'  I  have  overcome  the  world.'  Forgiveness,  we  say,  comes 
by  the  Cross.  But  Christ  forgave  before  the  Cross.  That 
is  because  He  was  alwaj^s  on  the  redeeming  Cross.  In 
the  midst  of  fife  He  was  in  saving  death — in  such  deaths 
oft.  So  the  solution  from  beyond  life  is  really  a  solution 
that  saturates  life.  It  is  above  fife  within  it,  au  deld  de 
VinUrieur. 

7.  All  the  crises  of  His  life,  I  have  been  saying,  had 
themselves  a  crisis  in  His  death,  where  the  victory  and 
the  solution  was  won  once  for  all.  He  did  not  cheer  the 
disciples  with  the  sanguine  optimism  of  the  good  time 
coming.  It  was  not  a  sanguine  optimism,  but  an  optimism 
of  actual  faith  and  conquest.  It  was  not  the  hope  of 
a  conquering  Messiah  soon.  '  He  is  here,'  was  the 
Gospel.  And  so  we  are  not  hopeful  that  the  world  will 
be  overcome  ;  we  know  it  has  been.  We  are  born  into 
au  overcome,  a  redeemed  world.  To  be  sure  of  that 
changes  the  whole  complexion  of  life,  religion,  and  action 
in  a  way  to  which  to-day  we  are  strange.  It  is  much  to 
be  quite  sure  that  the  w^orld  will  one  day  be  righteous  ; 
it  is  more  to  know  that  a  universal  Christ  is  its  perfect 


xn.]        THE  CONQUEST  OF  TBIE  BY  ETERNITY  229 

righteousness  already.  We  see  not  yet  all  things  put 
under  righteousness,  but  we  see  Jesus  already  crowned 
with  that  glory  and  honour.  That  is  Christianity.  If  it 
seem  absurd,  it  is  only  as  the  peace  of  God  is  so  in  such  a 
world  as  surrounds  us. 

8.  This  word  once  for  all  has  the  note  of  the  infinite 
and  eternal  and  final,  the  note  of  the  last  reahty  in  all 
things.  The  solution  in  the  Gospel  is  wrought  once  for 
all  because  it  was  on  a  world  scale,  an  eternal  scale, 
because  He,  and  He  alone  of  aU  men,  was  on  such  a  scale. 
He  was  on  a  scale  which  made  the  New  Testament  writers 
give  Him  not  only  a  human  and  historic  influence  but  a 
cosmic,  nay,  an  absolute.  He  was  to  command  not  only 
the  race  but  the  universe,  and  save  not  only  the  soul  but 
the  whole  groaning  and  travailing  creation.  That  is  one 
reason  for  beheving  in  miracles,  and  especially  the  miracle 
of  the  Resurrection.  He  is  King,  Subjugator,  and  Com- 
mander both  of  nature  and  the  soul.  And,  if  He  emerge 
on  the  soul's  experience  with  the  miracle  of  grace,  then 
in  the  service  of  that  grace  He  may  emerge  also  on  the 
soul's  world  with  miracles  of  power ;  and  especially  in  His 
Resurrection.  Heaven  is  not  simply  the  soul  lifted 
abstractly  above  nature  ;  it  is  not  simply  the  rule  of  the 
spiritual ;  it  is  nature  compelled  to  serve  the  redeemed 
soul.  Christ's  miracles  are  parts,  and  even  functions,  of 
His  moral  conquest  and  control  of  the  whole  world. 

But,  however  that  be.  He  was,  in  His  victory,  the  Agent 
of  the  race.  He  did  not  overcome  the  world  as  a  cloistered 
saint  might,  who  conquers  it  in  his  sohtary  soul.  He  does 
not  bid  us  go  and  do  likewise.  Christ  was  no  mere  lone 
individual  and  pioneer.  He  was  the  soul  and  conscience 
of  the  race.  It  is  by  union  with  Him  the  race  fives.  If 
He  overcame  the  world,  it  was  Humanity  that  won.  If 
Christ  died  for  aU,  all  died  in  the  act.  We  rise  because 
He  rose  ;  and  we  rise  not  fike  Him  but  in  Him.  And 
what  was  overcome  was  not  private  temptations  but  the 


230  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch. 

world  taken  as  one  godless  principle.  All  the  hate  in  it 
was  now  less  than  the  love,  since  God  had  come,  had 
conquered,  and  come  to  abide  in  His  Spirit.  For  the 
conquest  was  not  mere  conquest,  as  by  a  Stoic  hero  ;  it 
was  revelation,  redemption,  regeneration  as  by  the  Lord 
the  Spirit,  by  the  Son  of  God,  in  whom  men  are  more 
than  conquerors.  We  are  the  beneficiaries  of  His  con- 
quest by  union  with  Him.  We  are  not  so  much  conquerors 
by  His  side  or  in  His  wake  ;  we  are  members  of  Him  and 
His  moral  victory.  Every  soul  saved  is  regenerate  by  the 
Resurrection  (1  Peter  i.  3).  That  is  the  source  of  the  Spirit 
of  our  regeneration — its  point  of  real  origin. 

9.  We  may  now  see  why,  if  life  is  a  problem,  its  solution 
is  a  faith  ?  We  cannot  solve  life  by  moral  thought  or  effort 
but  by  trust,  which  unites  us  with  the  invincible,  eternal, 
moral  act  of  God  in  Christ.  Christianity  is  not  the 
sacrifice  we  make,  but  the  sacrifice  we  trust ;  not  the 
victory  we  win,  but  the  victory  we  inherit.  That  is  the 
evangehcal  principle.  We  do  not  see  the  answer;  we 
trust  the  Answerer,  and  measure  by  Him.  We  do  not 
gain  the  victory  ;  we  are  united  with  the  Victor.  Faith 
is  not  simply  contact  but  communion.  We  do  not  simply 
refer  our  souls  to  Christ,  we  commit  them.  And  to  commit 
our  souls  to  Christ  is  to  confess  the  Godhead  of  Christ. 
It  would  be  idolatry  to  commit  our  eternal  soul  to  one 
who  differed  from  us  but  in  degree.  Christ  crucified  and 
risen  is  the  final,  eternal  answer  to  the  riddle  of  life.  One 
day,  when  we  sit  m  heavenly  places  in  Christ,  we  shall 
see  the  tangle  of  life  unroll  and  fall  into  shape.  We  shall 
see  death  as  the  key  of  life.  Our  own  dead  could  tell 
us  so  already.  We  shall  see  guilt  destroyed  ;  and,  with 
that,  death,  wrong,  darkness,  and  grief. 

The  last  enemy  to  be  destroyed  was  guilt.  The  problem 
of  problems  is  the  moral  problem.  I  wish  the  mystics  and 
the  thinkers  could  realise  that  tragedy.  The  problem  is 
the  practical  problem  of  sin.  The  answer  of  all  is  a  mora] 
one.     It  is  redemption.     The  Son  of  God  is  He  that  taketh 


XII.]        THE  CONQUEST  OF  TIME  BY  ETERNITY  231 

away  by  the  moral  victory  of  His  soul  the  sin  of  the  world. 
In  Him  the  world  passed  its  judgment  on  God,  and  Christ 
took  it.  But  still  more  in  Him,  God  passed  His  judgment 
on  the  world,  and  Christ  took  that  also.  If  we  have  any 
sense  of  judgment  we  have  much  reason  to  fear.  I 
cannot  understand  how  any  one  with  any  sense  of  judg- 
ment can  discard  the  atonement  and  Hve  without  terror. 
But,  if  we  have  the  sense  of  the  holy  and  the  faith  of 
judgment,  the  faith  that  Christ  took  God's  judgment  on 
the  world,  we  must  be  of  good  cheer.  The  world  is  judged 
for  good  and  all  in  Christ.  The  last  judgment  is  by.  All 
our  judgments  are  in  its  ascending  wake. 

He  has  overcome  the  world.  That  is  the  faith  which 
distinguishes  the  cheery  egoist  in  rehgion  from  the  humble 
confessor.  That  is  what  gives  the  Church  a  lease  of  Ufe 
beyond  all  States  and  their  wars.  A  world  war  is  less 
than  the  world  judgment  in  Christ.  And  its  horror  is 
less  dreadful  than  man's  murder  of  the  Son  of  God.  Under 
everything  is  that  Rock  of  Ages.  Over  every  tragedy  is 
the  eternal  reconcihation.  The  Church's  one  foundation 
carries  the  whole  world. 

There  are  many  unschooled  thinkers  who  say  that  an 
awful  catastrophe  hke  this  European  war  is  enough  to  un- 
settle any  beUef  in  a  God,  a  Father,  a  kingdom  of  heaven. 
Nay,  but  it  is  the  other  way.  With  such  Europe,  with 
its  negligence  of  God  and  His  righteousness,  with  the  levity 
even  of  the  religious  mind,  the  unsettling  thing  would  be 
if  there  were  no  catastrophe.  The  disquieting  thing  would 
be  if  there  were  no  judgment  on  materialist  civiHsations, 
poor  pieties,  and  shallow  politics,  and  gorgeous  getting  on, 
were  there  no  rectification  of  things  by  a  tremendous 
surgery,  no  dreadful  excision  of  the  deadly  growth  that 
gathers  within  the  nations  that  forget  God.  It  is  all  the 
judgment  action  of  that  kingdom  of  grace  for  which  we 
pray.  By  terrible  things  in  righteousness  dost  Thou 
answer  us,  O  God  of  our  salvation.  When  we  pray  for 
the  kingdom  to  come,  we  know  not  what  we  ask. 


232  THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  GOD  [ch.  xn.] 

I  am  not  speaking  chiefly  of  the  courage  that  flows 
from  faith.  I  am  thinking  of  open-eyed  faith  itself  as  an 
act  of  supreme  courage.  It  is  a  bold  thing  to  believe  in 
love  amidst  such  a  world,  with  the  memory  of  such  a 
past  as  we  feel  in  ourselves  or  trace  through  history ;  in 
the  presence  of  such  a  holy  God  as  from  the  Cross  makes 
sin  so  guilty  and  judgment  so  dreadful;  with  the  wretched 
experience  in  us  and  round  us  of  the  tough,  invincible, 
recurrent  power  of  evil.  It  is  a  bold  thing  in  the  face 
of  the  proud,  progressive,  aggressive,  warhke,  Satanic 
world.  It  is  an  act  of  supernatural  courage,  in  the  face  of 
all  that  to-day,  to  beUeve  in  the  love  and  grace  of  God. 
To  some  who  realise  none  of  these  things  it  may  still  seem 
an  act  of  groundless  audacity.  But,  if  we  do  reaHse  them, 
if  we  reahse  God's  judgments,  we  need  all  the  moral 
courage  God  can  give  us  to  beheve  in  a  thing  so  tremendous 
as  the  total  victory  over  such  a  world  already  won,  and 
already  ours,  even  if  we  sometimes  relapse.  All  things 
are  ours,  even  that  victory,  that  elevation  over  a  world's 
sin  in  us  ;  and  our  very  relapses  cannot  rob  us  of  it.  It  is 
easy  to  believe  with  a  poor  sense  of  what  the  holy  is,  of 
what  it  makes  sin  to  be,  of  what  the  world  is,  and  can  do, 
for  the  devil.  But  it  needs  the  supernatural  courage  of  the 
Cross  to  beheve  (at  such  an  hour  as  this,  say,)  in  the  com- 
pleteness of  the  Cross  and  its  eternal  victory.  But  there, 
the  more  horror,  the  more  hope.  The  most  damning  hght 
is  the  saving  hght.  Therefore,  the  more  holy  fear,  the  more 
the  Cross  is  working  in  us;  and  the  sense  of  the  Cross's 
judgment  is  the  effect  of  its  grace.  Faith  is  more  than 
an  individual  calm  ;  it  is  the  Church's  collective  confidence 
on  the  scale  of  the  world  for  the  destiny  of  the  world. 
The  evil  world  will  not  win  at  last,  because  it  failed  to 
win  at  the  only  time  it  ever  could.  It  is  a  vanquished 
world  where  men  play  their  devilries.  Christ  has  over- 
come it.  It  can  make  tribulation,  but  desolation  it  can 
never  make. 


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Strahan. 
St,  Paul.     Romans  VIII.  with  Commentaries. 
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Norgate,  1888.) 
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chapters  iii.  and  iv.     (Hodder  and  Stoughton.) 
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